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Blog AuthorKaran Gupta
PublishedSep 20, 2024
Views2,165
Read Time5 mins
Table of Content
The term DevOps is a conjunction of two different terms: 'Dev', meaning development, and 'Ops', or operations. When software development is in process, generally these two parts are helpful for a stable development and release cycle.
So, what is DevOps? It is generally a software development and delivery approach taken by the developers. The process aims to bridge the gap between the ‘Dev’ and ‘Ops’ teams.
DevOps helps developers and IT teams work together better by automating tasks and streamlining processes. This means that new features or updates can be delivered to users in a smoother manner resulting in fewer errors.
Working as a DevOps Engineer, I have gathered a few crucial insights that I am going to share below. Read through them to gather a detailed understanding of their concepts and their benefits in the modern software development process.
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While working on software development domains, I realized that both ‘Dev’ and ‘Ops’ are siloed and there are hardly any connections between these departments. Ultimately, it causes disruptions in the development of applications or its usage which may hamper product quality.
I realised that DevOps encourages open communication and collaboration among team members. Therefore, if you ask what DevOps is, just know that it is responsible for fostering shared responsibility among the members. So, no two arms of development and operations are secluded; rather, they are intertwined in their functionalities.
Continuous integration and delivery feature the practice of building, testing, and deploying software changes.
Therefore, it does not support testing the software post-development, but rather it is still ongoing through tests and production. Integrating automatic testing features into such cycles is further known to enhance the overall development process.
Automation serves as a powerful tool for DevOps technology as it reduces human errors. Thus, it allows faster release cycles for the software and also helps in improving the consistency of the process.
DevOps technology mainly relies on gathering inputs and then using them for an action. Therefore, the entire system is based on gathering feedback from both technical teams and external stakeholders. Ultimately, the process helps to improve the software development process.
If you ask me, What is DevOps culture all about?" the answer is pretty simple: learning from experiences. Teams working following DevOps and Agile Principles might evaluate and assess their processes to identify areas for growth and optimization.
Overall, DevOps technology is all about quick iterations and faster software releases for businesses. Besides that, if there are any challenges faced by either of the teams, like development or operations, then DevOps tries to work your way out using smart collaborations.
From my experience, I can answer what DevOps is used for. It is simply streamlining software releases by ensuring collaboration, automation, and CI/CD implementation.
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To answer this, let me introduce you to a common example of an online food ordering tool. A business designs an application and then it starts hosting it for users to download.
Once you download you can start ordering food and a map view opens where you find the delivery agent coming near your location. What happens if there is a glitch in the system, or worse what if the entire system was non-existent?
You must be alarmed about the physical efforts needed to visit the counter and buy food. Well, DevOps technology is useful for mitigating such circumstances using state-of-the-art software development processes.
In today's technology-driven world, businesses rely heavily on technology and software systems. DevOps technology plays a crucial role in establishing a strong foundation for these businesses. Many companies use software systems to improve their operational efficiency. It's essential to understand the significance of DevOps in the context of the modern technological world.
As per Atlassian, DevOps is said to have a positive impact on their establishments as per 99% of the respondents in the DevOps Trends Survey. Keeping this in mind I can assure you that there are multiple benefits of DevOps technology in recent times. Some of the core benefits of DevOps are:
As I have already mentioned previously, what is DevOps used for primarily belongs to streamlining the development process. A study by DORA, in their ‘State of DevOps report 2019’ pointed out that elite teams using principles of DevOps are releasing software products 208 times faster than others. Hence, I can show you that factually DevOps implementation is good for working teams in software development.
Lying deep within the DevOps principles is the scope for collaboration and teamwork. Thus, it helps to improve transparency among team members for a better software development process.
It helps the team members to take full responsibility for the tasks that are assigned and provide their input. Additionally, it also helps in enabling ‘systems thinking’ which is essential to take accountability and understand how their performance affects their team members.
The team that has the fastest feedback loops can help in tweaking the important parts of software easily. Full transparency and proper communication among the team members is essential for reducing downtime. Adding such a framework with an agile methodology like Kanban, or Scrum, helps team members to understand issues and fix them as soon as they arise.
In any of the development teams, there might be chances of pending unmanaged work. Randomly assigning them without any agenda in mind can cause haphazard mistakes. With a clear prioritization, and understanding of the DevOps technology you can aim for streamlined systems of working.
If you are trying to understand what is DevOps then it will not be complete without understanding the DevOps lifecycle. To start, I focus on the seven stages of the DevOps lifecycle and they are:
The phase involved planning and coding the software. For this phase, there are no DevOps tools, but several tools are available for maintaining the code.
This stage requires a professional to code and align the codes to the client’s requirements from the software. Building a complete set of codes in this stage involves unit testing, integration testing, code review, and packaging. A Popular tool that is used in this phase is Jenkins, to fetch the build for the updated code.
In this phase, what DevOps is used for primarily involves checking bugs. It is only natural for a code to contain some unwanted glitches which are called bugs. With automated testing tools like Selenium, TestNG, JUnit, etc., you can identify and fix those bugs easily.
In this phase of development, the entire software system is tested for important trends. Usually, the monitoring system is taken into consideration for the entire life of the software application development process.
In the software development process, feedback related to the performance of the software is essential for its advancements. Constant feedback from the testers to the development team ensures proper utilization of time. It ultimately enhances the production speeds and also reduces issues in new versions of existing software.
In this phase, the code gets deployed into a live interface, also called a production server. Unlike, developmental or staging servers used for refining applications, production servers run a finalized public-facing version of the application.
DevOps technology is heavily reliant on complete automation of the release process for software. Such systems play an important role in reducing the risks of errors and also accelerate the time to reach the market effectively.
Some of the popular DevOps practices, important for software development projects are:
To streamline the overall software development process I must explain CI/CD and its importance. For example, instead of sending separate tests for a Quality Assessment team, integrate them in the development process early on. With such a DevOps process in play, fixing bugs becomes a lot simpler.
Due to the recent shift of the systems from on-premise systems to cloud or microservice-based applications monitoring systems are getting complex. To align with appropriate DevOps principles you need to establish three pillars of observability, logs, traces, and metrics. Using data from such pillars you may easily track and observe the workflow using passive data.
Continuous feedback helps team members to access all the information they need for their job. From the viewpoint of software development, such a system helps in detecting and reporting any failures early on.
Popular DevOps tools that are used by developers to aid faster software development and deployment processes are:
1. Ansible: Open source tool for application deployment.
2. Docker: Popularly it is known for container management, and it helps in assembling applications quickly from its components.
3. Nagios: Helps in identifying errors and rectifying them, using network infrastructure, server, log, and monitoring systems.
4. Jenkins: Allows continuous integration and helps in integrating project changes readily.
5. Git: Open-sourced distribution version control available for everyone to handle minor or major projects. With its version control feature, you can easily collaborate readily with several team members in a single platform.
Please note that I have used all these tools during my project days, however, you can use other combinations of tools as well. The answer to what is DevOps in the realm of software development is unified and involves streamlining the software development.
If you are asking about what is DevOps then the answer is pretty straightforward and consists of processes and ways to streamline software development. Apart from that, a DevOps engineer is responsible for all aspects of software development, including workflows, automation, and analyzing codes.
Moreover, the smooth collaboration within the Development and Operations team helps in the faster software release possible. Consider enrolling for a course today from StarAgile, and make sure to learn and implement such software development processes effectively.
DevOps helps in the process of software automation and helps in creating code, application maintenance, and application management. Therefore, what is DevOps in the context of software development is a set of tools and processes that helps streamline software development tasks.
Yes, DevOps technology needs coding as a part of the development process. However, with that being said, it is not entirely about coding but improving the processes and collaboration among team members.
Yes, DevOps is an emerging concept in the realm of current software development processes. Moreover, due to its ability to integrate the aspects of development and operations it helps in improving the software development processes.
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