The Importance of DevOps: Revolutionizing Software Delivery in the Digital Age

What is DevOps?

With the proliferation of the technology market, software companies are under extreme pressure to deliver software without delay and defect, which is an uphill task for all the companies in this domain. We are familiar with the famous adage: Necessity is the mother of invention. This adage fits any situation, as most inventions are born out of necessity. DevOps is one such practice that has seen the light to speed up the delivery process by reducing the gaps between responsible teams. DevOps is an approach in software development that emphasizes collaboration, communication, and integrating all company departments into one capsule to ensure quick and reliable software delivery.

DevOps is a mixture of philosophies, people, practices, and tools that help to enhance an organization's ability faster than conventional practices. Such strength enables organizations to maintain quality and security and stay ahead of competitors to gain business advantage.

History of DevOps

In software development, from the business perspective, there was always a gap between the accepted and actual delivery time. Also, there needed to be more clarity between the expected and delivered quality. These gaps posed a significant challenge to organizations by questioning their credibility. It is undeniable that client satisfaction is an essential brand builder. Companies started to think about finding a solution to this problem. In 2009, a Belgian Software Developer, Patrick Debois, coined the term DevOps. In addition to the conference DevOpsDays, DevOps' origin is connected with the Agile Software development practice, which emphasizes the continuous integration process. Since 2010, there has been a significant rise in the levels of the adoption of DevOps practice by software organizations. DevOps effectively reduced the silos between Software and Operations teams by automating, monitoring, and testing the software efficiently.

Why is DevOps important?

DevOps offers many advantages. They are:

Increased Software delivery speed:?DevOps has specific practices and tools designed to enhance the software delivery speed by automating otherwise time-consuming and challenging practices. The reduction in delivery times helps the clients to reach the market quickly and make the most.?

Rise in Quality:?Continuous testing, automated processes, and innovative processes help organizations maintain high quality and be the differentiator in the competitive market by reducing downtime and minimizing errors.

Collaboration:?The essential feature of any successful team is its coordination. DevOps involves collaboration and communication between development and Operations teams by reducing communication errors and integrating them into a single effective entity that can deliver the best of its capability.

Reverse Communication:?Another striking feature of DevOps is receiving feedback from customers and stakeholders, which is critical in any development process. Structured feedback helps organizations make necessary changes, be in tune with the customers' expectations, and assist in customer retention.

Agility:?DevOps practices help organizations remain dynamic and quickly adopt a change to meet market requirements. Agility is the key selling point for many companies. Those who embrace change and are agile will stay above the competitors. DevOps offers this leverage to those who adopt its practices.

How does DevOps work?

DevOps emphasizes collaboration, communication, and process automation to achieve faster software delivery, minimize errors, and increase scalability. Any DevOps process has 8 phases specific to their role in the entire lifecycle. Here is the stepwise process of DevOps.

1. Plan

This is the first stage in the process. In this stage, developers and operations teams collaborate and discuss all the details of the goals and requirements of the project. The teams plan user stories, define dependencies and iterations, and make way for the following process stage.

2. Code

In this stage, the developers take all the responsibility for writing the code required for the project. They regularly interact with the operations team to learn about the client's requirements and make necessary changes.

3. Build

All the code is carefully loaded in a build ready for error testing at this stage. This is the stage where the preliminary work of the development team gets over. When the build is all set for use, the fourth stage of the process begins.

4. Test

This is the fourth stage. In this stage, continuous testing ensures the agreement between the expectations and the product. Error detection at the right time helps reduce the time and effort that go into the process.?

5. Release

The release phase is associated with production, deployment, and post-production activities. The release is when software is available to users after crossing all the development life cycle?stages.

6. Deploy

In this stage, code is deployed to the target or client environment. It can be a staging environment or a production environment. DevOps has infrastructure as code and automated deployment, which help to ensure consistent, reliable, repeatable, and error-free deployment.?

7. Operate

In this phase, the software is operated by the user. As the user will have real-time utility, the developed software will undergo real-time test and enables the teams to monitor the performance in the next stage.?

8. Monitor

In this phase, expectations and the actual performance of the software are monitored to identify any gap between the two. DevOps practices such as continuous monitoring help to identify and resolve issues quickly.?This stage also provides feedback to the development team. Feedback comes from all the stakeholders, which helps continuous improvement in the quality of the software with the collaborative and iterative approach of DevOps.?

Conclusion

DevOps as a service can add value to software companies and differentiate them from their competitors. By offering quality DevOps service to clients to improve the software delivery process, software companies can help achieve business goals and stay ahead in a competitive market.

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