DevOps

DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development and IT operations. It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. DevOps is complementary with Agile software development.

At Data Engineers we are big believer's that if you need to something more than once you need to automate it. This can be achieved through keeping everything as code so you can push your changes out via a workflow to your environment upon code check-in.

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment pushing code changes directly to production once all tests have passed allows organizations to innovate faster, leading to many business benefits, however to allow for this, DevOps has to become part of the culture and mindset. Netflix, Facebook, Spotify to name some big brands have adopted the DevOps culture across the organization helping them achieve near-perfect uptime, push new features faster to the users, and increase their subscribers and streaming hours.

We understand this may be the goal and if you are currently working in monthly or fortnightly cycles, requiring manual testing and several sign offs before you go any where near production you need to start small while your practices change and adopt to the new mindset.

How do we begin our journey?

The DevOps transformation journey begins with focusing on a Continuous Delivery practice that can deliver software in a fast, safe, reliable, and repeatable way. When planning for a transformational journey, one imagines that the journey will be linear and smooth, however we know that is rarely the case. Below is how you can get started on your DevOps journey

Mindset — Start talking about Continuous Delivery with your team to bring everyone on board. DevOps is as much about Culture as it is about technology
Road Map — Create a DevOps Roadmap so you know where you would like to get to
Toolset — Select the DevOps Tools you would like to implement along the roadmap
Test Automation — Start the process of implementing automated tests, removing the need for the hundreds of manual tests carried out
Build Automation — For every checkin, ensure that you build your code base and run all automated tests every time
Release Automation — Review how you perform releases and where you can automate them rather than manually deploying and applying configuration changes
Branching Strategy — Review your current branching strategy and ensure that it makes sense for your roadmap and toolsets
Requirements — Review how you receive your requirements, do they comply with the INVEST framework?

Benefits of DevOps

With the ever-changing and fast-paced work environment, faster delivery and shorter turnaround time in the software development space have become imperative to an organization’s growth. Resultantly, production of high-quality output with limited post-production errors has given rise to DevOps. Here are some of the benefits an organization can enjoy after adopting the DevOps way of working:

Speed — DevOps practices let you move at the velocity you need to innovate faster, adapt to changing markets better, and become more efficient at driving business results.
Rapid Delivery — When you increase the pace of releases, you can improve your product faster and build competitive advantage.
Reliability — DevOps practices like continuous integration and continuous delivery can ensure the quality of application updates and infrastructure changes so you can reliably deliver at a more rapid pace while maintaining an optimum experience for end users.
Improved Collaboration — Under a DevOps model, developers and operations teams collaborate closely, share responsibilities, and combine their workflows. This reduces inefficiencies and saves time.
Security — You can adopt a DevOps model without sacrificing security by using automated, integrated security testing tools.

DevOps Methodologies

DevOps is the direct descendant of agile software development, born from the need to keep up with increased software development velocity and throughput agile methods. Advancements in agile development highlighted the need for a more holistic approach to the software delivery life cycle, resulting in DevOps.

“Agile development” is an umbrella term for several iterative software development methodologies, many of which have carried over to DevOps:

Scrum — a framework in which people can address complex adaptive problems while delivering products of the highest possible value.
Kanban — a method for managing the creation of products with an emphasis on continual delivery while not overburdening the development team. Like Scrum, Kanban is a process designed to help teams work together more effectively.
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) — a set of organization and workflow patterns intended to guide enterprises in scaling lean and agile practices. SAFe is one of a growing number of frameworks that seek to address the problems encountered when scaling beyond a single team.
Lean development — a translation of lean manufacturing principles and practices to the software development domain. Adapted from the Toyota Production System. Lean offers a conceptual framework, values, and principles, as well as best practices derived from experience, that support agile organizations.
Extreme programming (XP) — a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. XP advocates frequent releases in short development cycles, intended to improve productivity and introduce checkpoints at which new customer requirements can be adopted.