The Principles and Practices of DevOps — Why Are They Important?

In order to remain competitive a company must be able to move quickly to bring better solutions to market and DevOps assists this by improving ROI, efficiency, quality and planning.

It is essential that the company organization, culture and business practices are supportive before DevOps can begin to fulfill its potential. There are various stages an organization should go through before DevOps is integrated into their processes.

Do you need DevOps integration?

The decision to integrate DevOps must be based on actual business needs rather than simply adopting a new trend for its own sake. Does DevOps fit in with your IT strategy? How will it help meet your IT Goals?

Build a Collaborative Team

Careful analysis of the communication between your operations and development teams and how they coordinate their efforts will identify any areas that need to be improved before DevOps is implemented. This will remove one of the biggest challenges faced when integrating DevOps into your business.

Make End-User Satisfaction Your Focus

The whole reason for enhancing quality, performance and time to market is driven by your customer’s needs so the company culture must make this paramount. The customer must become king — factors like communication, transparency and commitment to great user experience is vital.

Don’t Try To Force the Process

Start small and work up. Use DevOps for a smaller project first, iron out any flaws and then work to scaling it up.

Build Trust

Your workforce needs to trust the process, by starting small you are more likely to have some successes which will make the team more confident in the DevOps structure.

Automate!

If you can make sure you automate as much of the process as you can. This will lower costs, speed up development, and improve the entire development cycle. The key areas to look at for automation are:

• The development of code.
• Changes to databases and networking.
• Testing and quality control.
• Version control.
• Building, testing and deployment processes.

All of these will help to ensure that the DevOps process lends itself to a higher quality product and a better user experience.

Key Takeaways:

• DevOps relies on building trust and a new company culture.
• Removing barriers between departments increases communication and enables the organization to enjoy more of the benefits of DevOps.
• Version control must include all the key team members, not just the developers.
• Individuals and interactions are more important than processes and tools.
• Start small and build — iron out issues as you go and provide some inspirational successes to encourage the team.

If you’re looking for a company that provides Software Testing and other software development services contact us.