6 Reasons Why Do We Need DevOps
Wednesday, 20 July, 2022
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DevOps is the gold standard in IT. It is a set of practices that enables collaboration between development and operations teams to deliver applications, and promote software development, and services faster.
DevOps has brought innovation and speed to the forefront of the IT industry, making it the go-to choice for enterprises that want to stay ahead of the competition. However, DevOps is not without its challenges.
The biggest challenge is the traditional mindset that views development and operations as two separate functions. This can make it difficult for organizations to break down silos and align their goals.
But with the right tools and processes in place, DevOps can help organizations overcome these challenges and unleash the full potential of their IT teams.
So, Why Do We Need DevOps, and What Makes it so Popular?
DevOps has become a popular term in the software development community, but what is it and why do we need it?
DevOps is a set of practices that aim to automate and improve the process of software delivery. It emphasizes communication and collaboration between developers and operations teams to help create stable operating environments.
Traditional software development practices have often been siloed, where communication and collaboration between teams are limited. This can lead to delays in releases and deployments, as well as stability issues.
DevOps aims to improve this by increasing communication and collaboration between teams, as well as automating many of the tasks involved in software delivery. This helps to speed up releases and deployments, while also ensuring that environments are more stable.
As a result, DevOps has become a popular choice for organizations that want to improve software quality and delivery processes.
Why is DevOps Important for Businesses?
Fig. 1. DevOps shortens the development life cycle for faster product deployment
(Source: Freepik)
DevOps is a movement that stresses continuous deployment, communication, collaboration, and integration between software developers and information technology (IT) professionals.
The goal of DevOps is to shorten the software development life cycle and provide faster time to market for new features and services.
In the past, developers would create code and then hand it over to IT operations to deploy. This process often resulted in delays, as IT operations would need to assess the code and make sure it was compatible with the existing infrastructure.
With DevOps, both developers and IT operations work together from the beginning. This collaboration ensures continuous integration where the code can be seamlessly deployed for continuous delivery into production without any disruptions.
Here is a quick look at two methods of the software development process that existed before the rise of DevOps.
The Waterfall Model
The era of software development practice began with a simple and cascading or sequential software delivery process called the Waterfall model. Here, software development is divided into various stages that flow from one to the next, making it challenging to return to the previous stage and make changes or updates as required.
This sort of production environment did not support the collaboration of the development and operations teams which naturally resulted in numerous bugs at the end of the software delivery process.
The Agile Software Development
In the Agile software development approach, each stage is split into multiple iterations that last about three weeks, where software is delivered at the end of every iteration. Each iteration process requires different functional teams to work on producing software quality simultaneously, ranging from requirements, design, development, and release.
The drawback of this model was the inability of the developer’s code to function seamlessly for the operations team since numerous iterations were needed for a single software product.
This is where the need for DevOps practices rose, with its concept of continuous integration and continuous delivery to ensure customer satisfaction at every step of the process.
Understanding the DevOps Lifecycle
Fig. 2. The DevOps life cycle
(Source: Freepik)
Adopting a DevOps culture helps organizations innovate faster and build a competitive advantage over a similar market when compared to traditional release practices. Let’s understand how the DevOps operating system works to fully realize its importance to achieve successful business results.
Here are the key practices that make up the DevOps Lifecycle.
1. Source Code Management
In the context of the DevOps lifecycle, source code management plays an important role in enabling continuous delivery and constant feedback. Tracking changes and maintaining a history of all past versions allows teams to enable quicker innovation and easily roll back changes that cause problems.
Additionally, SCM makes it possible to automatically deploy new code changes after they have been tested and approved. This helps to speed up the delivery process and ensure that only high-quality code is released into production.
2. Continuous Build and Test
Continuous Build and Test is a set of practices that emphasize constant feedback and rapid iteration in order to deliver high-quality software. It begins with code changes being automatically built and tested after every commit, providing immediate feedback on the impact of the changes.
This enables the development teams to rapidly identify and fix errors, ensuring that code changes can be delivered safely and quickly. In addition, CBT helps to ensure that software is always in a deployable state, reducing the risk of disruptions during deployments.
3. Continuous Integration
CI is a practice where developers regularly merge working copies with shared mainline several times a day. By integrating regularly, teams can detect programming defects quickly and avoid the problems that can come with large, infrequent merges.
CI also allows teams to automatically build and test their code, ensuring that software changes do not break existing functionality. When used in conjunction with automation and other DevOps practices, CI can help organizations speed up the delivery of new features, ensure reduced deployment failures, and improve the quality of their software products.
4. Continuous Deployment
In this stage, code changes are automatically deployed to production, eliminating the need for manual tasks and deployments. Continuous Deployment allows DevOps teams to push code changes frequently and at a more rapid pace without the risk of breaking production.
It also enables teams to get feedback quickly and early in the development process so that issues can be fixed before they become showstoppers.
5. Continuous Monitoring
This practice involves automatically collecting data about the performance of software applications and infrastructure. The data can then be used to identify potential problems and take corrective action before they cause service disruptions.
By automating the monitoring process, DevOps teams can reduce the likelihood of human error and improve the overall organization’s ability to ensure quality software deployments.
6. Software Released
The aim of the software release is to ensure that the new software is stable and performs as expected. Release management is responsible for managing the software release process and ensuring that it runs smoothly.
The software release process can be complex, so it’s important to have a clear plan in place before starting. By following a well-defined process and using the right tools, you can make sure that your software releases go smoothly and deliver value to your users.
6 Reasons Why We Need DevOps Practices
Fig. 3. DevOps is popular because of its efficiency and flexibility
(Source: Freepik)
There are many benefits of DevOps for businesses. A few crucial reasons are detailed as follows.
1. Continuous Software Delivery
Continuous delivery is a software development practice in which code changes are automatically built, tested, and deployed to production environments. This allows businesses to release new features and fix bugs faster while reducing the risk of errors.
By adopting DevOps practices, businesses can achieve shorter development cycles, improved communication, and faster delivery of software.
- Shorter Development Cycles
Continuous delivery helps to shorten the software development cycle by automating the build, test, and deploy process. This means that changes can be released more frequently, without the need for lengthy manual processes.
- Improved Communication
Continuous delivery requires close collaboration between developers and operations teams. This can help to improve communication and reduce errors.
- Faster Delivery of Software
Automating the build, test, and deploy process can help to speed up the delivery of software. This is particularly beneficial for businesses that need to release new features or fix bugs quickly.
The benefits of continuous delivery in the context of DevOps can help businesses to release new features faster while reducing the risk of errors.
2. Better Team Collaboration
One of the key success factors for DevOps is strong collaboration between teams. In order to streamline workflows and maximize the benefits of DevOps, it is essential that teams share information and work together closely.
This can be a challenge, as team members may have different objectives and be located in different geographical areas. However, there are a number of ways to encourage better collaboration between teams, such as using common tools and communication platforms, setting clear goals, and establishing Regular team-building activities.
When teams work together effectively, the benefits of DevOps can be significant. Consequently, ensuring strong collaboration is an important part of successful DevOps implementation.
3. Efficient Code Deployment
When it comes to business benefits, easy deployment is one of the most often-cited advantages of a DevOps team.
In a traditional software development environment, new code can take weeks or even months to make its way from the development team to the production server.
However, in a DevOps environment, code can be deployed much more quickly and easily. This speed enables organizations to deploy new codes on a daily basis. This means that new features and updates can be made available to users much more quickly, which can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
In addition, organizations that incorporate a DevOps model deploy updates easily to help reduce the cost of ownership for businesses by reducing the need for expensive testing and quality assurance efforts. Overall, easy deployment is a major benefit of DevOps that can help businesses to improve their bottom line.
4. Increased Security Solutions
With DevOps, businesses can more rapidly identify and fix security issues. In the traditional software development model, problems are often not discovered until the software is released. This can lead to serious security breaches that can damage a company’s reputation and result in financial losses.
By contrast, in a DevOps environment, even though teams manage complex environments, problems are identified and fixed more quickly, which reduces the likelihood of a security breach.
In addition, DevOps can help businesses to automate their security processes. This can free up resources that can be devoted to other tasks, such as developing new features or improving customer satisfaction.
Automating security processes can also help to ensure that security measures are consistently applied across all systems and platforms. Ultimately, this can help to further reduce the chance of a security breach.
As businesses increasingly rely on software to power their operations, the need for effective and efficient software security teams will only grow.
5. Reduced Human Intervention
One of the key benefits of DevOps is that it requires less manual intervention. This is due to the fact that DevOps automates many of the tasks that are traditionally done manually.
For example, rather than having to manually deploy software updates, DevOps can automatically deploy updates as they become available. This can save a significant amount of time and effort, as well as reduce the chances of errors.
In addition, DevOps can also automate testing and monitoring tasks. This means that less time is spent on these tasks, and more time can be spent on developing new features and improving the quality of the software leading to healthy and more stable operating environments.
As a result, businesses that implement DevOps can see a significant improvement in their software development process.
6. Accounted for Scalability
One of the key factors for successful business outcomes is the scalability aspect of development and operations. With DevOps application development, businesses can streamline their software development and delivery process to be more efficient and scalable.
In particular, DevOps enables businesses to automate their software development process so that they can rapidly deploy new features and updates. This means that businesses can respond more quickly to changes in market demands and customer needs.
As a result, they can scale their operations and incorporate agile practices more effectively to meet rising demands. In addition, DevOps teams also help businesses to improve their quality assurance process so that they can release high-quality software products more frequently.
This not only helps to improve customer satisfaction but also reduces the risk of expensive software bugs and security vulnerabilities that are often seen in traditionally siloed teams. Consequently, better scalability is one of the key advantages of DevOps for businesses.
How Can Darey.io Help Those Who Want To Learn DevOps?
The challenge that most freshers face when getting a job in DevOps is the lack of real-world experience that is difficult to come by with just theoretical studies.
With Darey.io, you can acquire all the skills you need to get a high-demand job at the company you love. Our project-based learning modules give you crucial insight and knowledge of the various DevOps tools, programming languages, infrastructure resources, and more to become reliable software engineers in the field you desire.
If you’re looking to kickstart your DevOps career, do it with Darey.io. Select a study plan and join a masterclass to decide your pace and learn firsthand from highly experienced mentors.
Reach out to us today and begin your career journey through our unique learning approach.
written by
Dare Olufunmilayo
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