Businesses are working hard to develop strategies to be successful in their digital transformation journey to stay ahead of competitors. In this process, DevOps is a key enabler to achieve total digital transformation.
What Is DevOps?
DevOps is an increasingly common approach to software delivery where development and operations teams collaborate to build, test, deploy and monitor applications.
The core objective of DevOps is delivering software that's reliable, high quality and in-line with business objectives. The DevOps process increases Time-To-Market (TTM) and decreases Time-To-Delivery (TTD). Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) are integral practices of DevOps.
DevOps Lifecycle Stages
- Plan
- Develop
- Build deployments in a QA environment
- Test the builds
- Deploy tested builds into production environments in a seamless flow
- Monitor
Figure: Simplified DevOps model
Why Should Businesses Consider DevOps?
Detect and Fix Problems Before Deployment
In any software build, there may be many different developers writing code. It's important to make sure the software continues to build completely, even if different developers are testing their own code. DevOps provides a standard environment to build and test code in a neutral environment. Developers don't have to run builds, make release notes, or run profiling.
Improve Communication and Collaboration
Project management teams gain greater visibility into the overall build status and with automated reports, can obtain a clear overview of the deliverables. Stakeholders will have greater transparency in product development using interactive dashboards. DevOps improves communication and collaboration among project teams and with stakeholders, and it helps businesses to improve the software development culture.
Stay Ahead of Competitors
When development and operations work in silos, it's difficult to know if the application is ready. With collaborative efforts from both teams, the application is more likely to hit the market quickly, giving businesses a leg up from the competition.
Increase the Efficiency at Optimal Costs
With DevOps, the increase in efficiency helps to speed up the development process with fewer defects. It's estimated that DevOps saves 30–35% in overall project costs.
How DevOps Fosters Digital Transformation Efforts
Digital transformation is a strategy that demands interconnectivity of people, business processes and technology. DevOps facilitates organizations to provide innovative business solutions at a much faster rate while delivering greater business value.
DevOps plays a crucial role for organizations to develop and adhere to industry best practices. It enables them to understand the significance of best practices and helps organizations scale performance in a competitive market. The DevOps product delivery cycles are faster, more reliable, and lower cost. The process helps businesses experiment and implement innovative strategies.
Conclusion
With DevOps, businesses must realize that everyone in the chain is responsible for the quality and timeliness of deliverables. For successful adoption of the DevOps model, businesses need to define and adopt best-in-class and industry-proven practices.
About The author
Vinod Kumar works as a QA Lead at V-Soft Digital. He has 13 years of experience with 9 years of experience in various Performance and Other Testing projects in the Quality domain in the IT industry. He has good knowledge in Agile process methodology and has attained remarkable knowledge in testing Web & Mobile Applications, GUI, Functional, Integration, Database, Regression and Sanity. He has worked on various platforms like Xamarin, ServiceNow and Ionic mobile apps. He also is an RPA enthusiast. He is a Certified RPA Implementation manager, Certified professional in Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (LSSBB) and Certified Scrum Master (CSM). In addition to these he holds couple of certifications as a RPA Business Analyst, Six Sigma in Health Care, Modern Project Management - Quality Risk, Procurement and Project Closure etc.
