6 Key Steps to Implement DevOps Strategy in Your Organization

DevOps is a strategy that is boosting productivity to new heights. In a world where interconnectivity and speed are significant factors, DevOps has become the go-to production strategy as it has effectively bridged the gap between developers and operational project members. While its predecessor, agile, did the same, DevOps opened the potential for automation. While this may not sound impressive, one must acknowledge how easy productivity has become after DevOps revolutionized production by outshining the rigid waterfall.

The waterfall methodology mandated that every deliverable or action item can only be passed like the tools are passed on an assembly line. While this formula has worked on hardware production, this is not the best way to proceed with the software. For instance, a source code might have to be rewritten if the testing team unearths something drastic, and the testing team doesn’t get to test the product unless the development team has wholly developed the product. This back-and-forth approach not only eats away the time but also scales up the costs and energies.

Agile did away with this siloed production methodology and meshed the developers and operation teams by bringing forth the idea of iterative development and deployment of deliverables. Now, the testing team didn’t have to wait for the complete product to test and instead got to spot the bugs as and when an iterative update was developed. This swift testing allowed the development to patch bugs faster and ultimately enabled easier production processes.

Although agile bettered productivity, it left plenty of scope for modifications. As the world picked up the pace and integrated with the cloud and IoT, their workloads increased, unwittingly encouraging errors. DevOps was developed with the intention to shoulder some of the tasks and reduce the scope for errors, where the deliverables are engineered with the potential to be automated. To err is human, but automation reduces the human element and thereby anneals any potentialities for unwanted errors.

In a nutshell, DevOps is the approach that fosters collaboration between the developers and operations members while simultaneously reducing errors with automation at its heart. This sounds like an approach that any company would readily embrace and continue with its journey with. However, DevOps has much more to it than bringing together two teams as the methodology brings in a cultural change and various changes your company and project members need to be ready for. Unfortunately, at this stage, companies flail around, and their DevOps implementation fails. So, in this blog, let’s look at the DevOps best practices to avoid failure.

DevOps Best Practices

Every company comes along the way with its unique needs and customized infrastructure. However, there are always benchmarks and commonly agreed-on practices regarding how DevOps implementation should proceed. So, let’s dig in without further ado.

Introduction

Yes, introduction. DevOps is an idea, but the tools and the underlying practices lend DevOps its shape. Be it whosoever’s the decision to embrace DevOps, the management and employees should be on the same page regarding the DevOps strategy. The relevant project members need to be educated about the DevOps deployment tools and other intricacies involved in the DevOps lifecycle. The stakeholders need to proceed with the new approach as it is a paradigm shift from the traditional methodologies from the waterfall. And given the keenness to include automation, it is undoubtedly different than agile, and the appropriate members need to be familiar with DevOps automation tools. These introduction sessions or seminars shall give the project members an understanding of how the DevOps best practices will be executed and how they will benefit them.

Develop a practical DevOps Strategy

There are always high expectations on DevOps as one thinks there will be immense and immediate benefits as soon the strategy is implemented. If the DevOps strategy is impractical, it leaves the project members in a lurch. The initial adoption speed should be gradual, and one should develop a strategy that acknowledges your business requirements. You should not ape someone else’s strategy and have an MSP do that part for you as an experienced hand would help steer better in the DevOps waters.

Embrace Containerization

Kubernetes and other containers are moving the DevOps field and making maintenance and deployment easy. These containers ensure reliability and allow developers to quickly develop and deploy the solutions. Containers also allow the individual components of infrastructure to function independently. This independence boosts overall resilience and gives you the freedom to concentrate on other fronts.

Better Products with CI/CD

Automation solutions like Kubernetes, Ansible, and Chef may be integrated with CI/CD platforms like Jenkins, Bamboo, or GoCD to tackle configuration and efficient execution concerns. In addition, these techniques get containers ready for risk tolerance through rolling software upgrades and regular monitoring.

Automate Testing

To achieve quicker delivery cycles, we advise test automation. However, the testing process may or may not be automated, depending on the breadth of the test cases. Contrarily, QA-Dev coordination is necessary to handle deployment problems. This synchronization aids in the early discovery of bugs and enables problem-solving before publishing the following build.

Monitoring

One should always keep an eye on applications even after an application is fully deployed, as maintenance constitutes a vital part of keeping the program ticking. Utilizing the appropriate technologies, application monitoring and evaluation assists in identifying, prioritizing, and isolating application flaws and their leading causes. These problems are typically discovered through application server and UX monitoring operations.

Conclusion

DevOps is a significant boost to productivity, and many companies are already experiencing long-term benefits. However, these companies had practical expectations and had an MSP do the heavy lifting for the most part. In the end, if you are a novice or want to realign your DevOps implementation, it would be better to understand the intricacies of DevOps or get an MSP to do the job for you.

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