What is DevOps?

Agility plays an in­creas­ingly important role in many fields, and software de­vel­op­ment is no exception. However, you couldn’t call DevOps a con­ven­tion­al software de­vel­op­ment system. It goes way beyond that. DevOps not only changes how software variants are developed, but it also alters the entire idea of co­oper­a­tion within a company. In the strictest sense, it is a company culture system that has a sig­ni­fic­ant effect on pro­ductiv­ity and ef­fi­ciency in the software de­vel­op­ment sector.

DevOps is a form of company culture that can be in­teg­rated into companies in the software and software de­vel­op­ment sector. It is a com­bin­a­tion of ap­proaches, practices, and tools that companies can use to both deploy software and no­tice­ably ac­cel­er­ate its ap­plic­ab­il­ity, while also improving quality.

A sig­ni­fic­ant feature of DevOps is that the de­vel­op­ment and op­er­a­tions teams work together directly, creating a better jux­ta­pos­i­tion of their activ­it­ies, which is not the case with con­ven­tion­al de­vel­op­ment processes. As such, potential problems for the op­er­a­tions team can already be taken into account by the de­velopers, while the op­er­a­tions team can im­me­di­ately benefit from the de­velopers’ knowledge of new features. This becomes par­tic­u­larly obvious when the focus is placed on the current chal­lenges of the market, since con­tinu­ous in­teg­ra­tion and con­tinu­ous delivery require very swift reaction times for the creation of new products, new versions, and current updates. This is where the DevOps concept becomes in­ter­est­ing, since the time between in­di­vidu­al de­ploy­ments is kept as short as possible.

With DevOps, the focus is on the de­ploy­ment of services for the IT sector, but the topics of security and IT com­pli­ance are initially not taken into account. As such, the concept of DevSecOps was created, in which the com­pon­ents de­vel­op­ment and op­er­a­tions are expanded to include a security element. The most important security elements are im­me­di­ately in­teg­rated into the de­vel­op­ment process.

With DevOps, various agile de­vel­op­ment tech­niques from the software de­vel­op­ment and IT sectors are brought together. In order for that to be be­ne­fi­cial to a company, de­vel­op­ment processes must be automated. In many companies, auto­ma­tion includes the following areas:

• Solutions for code de­vel­op­ment, code review, and the assembly of code snippets
• Tools for deploying new builds based on current code and gen­er­a­tion version
• Tools for the stat­ist­ic­al and dynamic review of existing code
• Tools for doc­u­ment­ing and approving release versions
• Tools for the man­age­ment process of In­fra­struc­ture as Code (IaC)
• Tools for mon­it­or­ing ap­plic­a­tions
• Tools for receiving and cat­egor­ising client feedback

DevOps has been developed in a way that gives it a wide range of suitable tools for all of these areas. However, this does not mean that each tool or solution will suit every company. As such, it is vital to first evaluate your company’s par­tic­u­lar needs, before deciding on certain tools. This also entails com­mu­nic­a­tion between various teams and de­part­ments, since they all need to be equally convinced of the func­tion­al­ity of each tool.

There is also an entire range of tools, like the fre­quently used con­tinu­ous in­teg­ra­tion tools, that can be used prac­tic­ally and se­lect­ively within the DevOps framework.

Due to very swift product and version cycles, it is virtually im­possible for any single person to handle the resulting lines of code on their own. As such, and es­pe­cially when it comes to debugging, automated systems must come into play, in order to find code or logic errors in the pro­gram­ming. In addition, different automated systems make the com­pil­a­tion, veri­fic­a­tion, and mon­it­or­ing of the entire process even simpler, so that the relevant employees are able to con­cen­trate on the errors that have been dis­covered. Not only does this avoid the rolling out of software that contains errors, but it also allows experts to fix more difficult errors quickly.

Without these solutions offered by auto­ma­tion, the processes in DevOps would only be feasible with a very high ex­pendit­ure of personnel and time, which would then cancel out the entire advantage of this de­vel­op­ment struc­tur­ing concept. As such, it can only be used ef­fi­ciently in con­junc­tion with the relevant auto­ma­tion and struc­tur­ing tools.

The DevOps system offers users, customers, and man­u­fac­tur­ers several ad­vant­ages, some of which include:

• Quicker de­vel­op­ment
• Quicker de­ploy­ment of updates and de­vel­op­ment versions
• Greater security through con­tinu­ous veri­fic­a­tion
• More new features thanks to faster pro­duc­tion steps
• Greater re­li­ab­il­ity through sim­ul­tan­eous tests running during de­vel­op­ment
• Greater security through the in­teg­ra­tion of DevSecOps
• Greater pro­ductiv­ity through better teamwork across team barriers

DevOps has many ad­vant­ages in relation to de­vel­op­ment that not only concern customers, but which also become im­me­di­ately no­tice­able within a company. Working across team barriers creates better col­lab­or­a­tion and a better un­der­stand­ing among col­leagues. It also prevents the formation of knowledge silos between different teams. This will no­tice­ably improve the problem-solving ca­pa­cit­ies of all teams.

If managers in a company are unable to help employees see the benefits of the system and employees continue to regard the ac­com­pa­ny­ing changes in their work processes with scep­ti­cism, the risk of employees not going along with the project could increase, leading to friction within the teams or even between various team units. As such, it is essential to com­mu­nic­ate the benefits of DevOps well, for employees not to feel re­stric­ted in their own, personal work areas.

Since the DevOps concept requires con­sid­er­able re­struc­tur­ing in various team units, thereby modifying the work areas and tasks of many employees, switching from con­ven­tion­al de­vel­op­ment processes to DevOps processes could lead to some dif­fi­culties in some companies. It is es­pe­cially important for company managers to keep in mind the necessity of ac­cel­er­at­ing de­vel­op­ment processes without sim­ul­tan­eously jeop­ard­ising the security of the end product. If this fun­da­ment­al principle can be in­ter­n­al­ised, then there is virtually no other solution with such short product cycles and such a high level of control as DevOps.

Once the switch has been made, im­ple­ment­a­tion should be ex­tens­ively planned out and the proper tools should be con­figured so that every single step of the iterative de­vel­op­ment of processes can run ef­fi­ciently and in a way that ensures it will pass future review. After employees and teams have had a chance to get used to the changes, the first suc­cess­ful results of using the system will soon become apparent. Not only can each new software offer be rolled out more quickly along with relevant updates, but the quality of the solutions can also be sig­ni­fic­antly improved, since each version can be reviewed much more precisely through automated checks and mon­it­or­ing, and can also be optimised for pro­duct­ive de­ploy­ment.

As such, software security issues and func­tion­al problems can be elim­in­ated more quickly, without creating any new issues or problems. In­teg­rat­ing DevOps processes may be a long and chal­len­ging exercise, but once the trans­ition has been made, both companies and clients will benefit from this solution.