What is DevOps and How Does It Work?

We know DevOps is having a moment since more than 50% of the organizations implemented DevOps in the last 2 years. So now when the future of IT operations sets its eyes on DevOps, many startups and businesses want to know what is DevOps and how it works. Is it a role, an approach, a theory, or a combination of all? Or maybe it means different to different groups of people? We have answered all your questions in this blog post. Continue to read.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a methodology for software development that integrates software development (Dev) with operations in information technology (Ops) that engage together in the whole product service lifecycle, from design to different phases of development to testing support.

In simple words, the term DevOps given by Patrick Debois refers to a combination of development and operations. The aim is to bridge the gap between IT operations and development in order to facilitate communication, seamless processes, and to create effective implementation methods.

But it isn’t just a series of acts. It is something of the culture and even an ideology that encourages collaboration between cross-functional teams. One of DevOps’ key advantages is that it does not entail major technological improvements that are more geared towards improving the way a development team operates.

How DevOps Works?

Just like all cultures, DevOps introduces several iterations of the development pattern. Most analysts, however, would accept that the following capabilities are common to nearly all communities.

Step 1. Plan

• Ops organize the tasks and schedule
• The project manager sets up project infrastructure management tools

Step 2. Code

• Devs write codes
• Use source code management tools and review the codes
• System administrators merge codes once reviewed

Step 3. Build

• Build artifact and the source code in the desired format
• Once engineer teams built source codes, use CI/CD tools to verify source codes

Step 4. Test

• Implement testing tools in your workflow to ensure high quality
• Receive feedback on business risks and determine the performance

Step 5. Package

• Implement packaging tools (software repository tools) to inline with business requirements and business goals
• Validate the package and key practices
• Import packaging into a deployment tool

Step 6. Release

• Manage changes
• Approve software releases
• Release automation and apps delivery

Step 7. Operate

• Operation department maintain, monitor, and troubleshoot applications
• Security teams check the security
• Recover and manage data backup and logs

Step 8. Monitor

• Ops monitor service performance
• Monitor logs
• Manage incident and end-user experience

The Benefits of DevOps

DevOps’ various advantages enlighten by Gene Kim will allow you to gain an edge on other innovations in the IT market. There are some of them:

1. High Speed

   DevOps lets the developers keep an eye on the device during its whole development cycle for any app changes or glitches. This lowers the time for bugs to be tracked, found, and patched, which speeds up your time to market.

   The DevOps paradigm also enables you to innovate quickly with consumers, better respond to evolving markets, and become more successful at driving business outcomes.

2. Rapid Delivery

   The core principles of adopting DevOps are continuous integration and continuous delivery, rapid feedback loop and continuous monitoring, which makes the processes of agile software development quicker and more efficient.

   Plus, it uses automation to ensure a smooth flow of the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) as an evolutionary stretch of the Agile technique. It provides the scope for quick and consistent reviews by fostering a shared DevOps culture such that any bugs are corrected in time.

3. Enhanced Collaboration

   When you implement the cultural paradigm of Dev Ops, you can create more productive teams that emphasize principles like ownership and responsibility. Now as developers and operations departments work well together, share many tasks, and merge their workflows, it decreases errors and saves time as improving collaboration.

4. Improved Security

   The Dev and Ops model uses automatic enforcement rules, fine-grained controls, and configuration management techniques that help to move quickly while retaining leverage and ensuring compliance policies. For example, you can describe and then monitor enforcement at scale, using infrastructure as code and policy as code.

5. Greater Scalability

   DevOps automation and continuity allow you to navigate dynamic (navigation menu) or evolving processes effectively and with decreased risk. Infrastructure as code, for example, lets you handle the production environments, testing, and output in a repeatable and more effective way that improves scalability.

6. Early Error Detection

   The integrated Dev Ops atmosphere encourages an information-sharing community around the departments. As business results, the overall performance of the building tends to be improved by automatic, continuous monitoring, and continuing code testing.

   When Dev Ops teams are advised to share their advice with each other, it helps to recognize the faults early and to correct them.

7. Production Support

   In this model, engineers not only work on new updates but within a solution that is already in a development environment and they also concentrate on solving crucial security issues in real-time.

   While they are the third and last team to be interested in solving manufacturing challenges, it is a very normal phenomenon and provides them with insights into production concerns that, in the first place, help them design better solutions.

DevOps Principles

While it is a functional approach, in an organization it is also essentially an attitude and cultural transformation. This theory is underscored by main principles as follows.

• Automation: Ops follows the automation principle to automate everything, such as workflows, checking new code, and how to minimize duplication and overwork by provisioning the infrastructure.
• Iteration: To support software updates and sub-releases that accelerate the speed and duration of launches, it writes small pieces of code during a time-box sprint.
• Continuous Improvement: In order to maximize efficiency, cost, and time for implementation, they constantly test, learn from mistakes, and act on feedback.
• Continuous Testing: To enable faster releases and higher quality assurance at the same time, the DevOps environment follows continuous testing.
• Collaboration: To combine efforts and reach success faster, Dev Ops initiate the collaboration between developers and Ops.

Also, you can read our complete guide on SRE vs DevOps. Know how both approaches empower the development processes differently.

DevOps Model and Practices

Dev and Ops include a product delivery cycle consisting of planning, agile development (an umbrella term), testing, rollout, release, and monitoring with active collaboration between a team’s multiple participants. To break down the test process, let’s take a look at the DevOps practices that define its culture.

1. Continuous Integration

   Continuous integration is a development practice (DevOps), in which developers often integrate code modifications into the main branch of code. CI uses automatic testing, which runs any time fresh code is committed, ensuring that the code is still secure in the main branch.

2. Continuous Delivery

   Continuous delivery is a practice given by Jez Humble where code updates are automatically constructed, reviewed, and scheduled for output release to customers. After continuous integration, it extends by deploying all code improvements to a testing environment and a production environment after the development process.

3. Microservices Architecture

   Another DevOps practice is a microservices architecture which is a design method to build a single program as a series of small services. Each service functions in its own process and communicates with other services using a lightweight framework or suitable programming languages.

4. Version Control Systems

   The method of handling codes in versions is the version control system. Using this standard Dev and Ops approach lets software teams work together, break coding tasks between product team members, and save all code for fast recovery if necessary.

5. Infrastructure as Code

   Infrastructure as a Code is an approach to infrastructure management that makes it possible for continuous delivery, continuous integration in Dev Ops culture. This includes using scripts to set the implementation environment (networks, virtual machines, etc.) to the appropriate configuration automatically, irrespective of its initial state.

6. Monitoring and Logging

   To see how application and system performance affects the end-users experience of their product, businesses track metrics and logs. Organizations understand how code changes or updates impact customers by capturing, categorizing, and then analyzing data and logs generated by applications and infrastructure.

DevOps Methodologies

DevOps adoption is the direct relative of the development of agile applications, born from the desire to keep up with the pace of development from the starting point. So let’s understand their methodologies as mentioned below.

• Scrum: It is a process in which individuals can solve dynamic adaptive challenges when developing software with the greatest possible value proposition. In general, Scrum concentrates on the product management and change management of programs.
• Kanban: Kanban is a strategy for handling product development with a focus on continuous execution while not overburdening the marketing team. Kanban is a method intended to make IT teams work more efficiently together.
• Scaled Agile Framework: This framework is a collection of workflow patterns that helps companies in the implementation of lean and agile strategies. It is one of an increasing number of systems that aim to solve the challenges faced beyond a single team when scaling. You can check here how to build software using agile methodology.
• Lean Development: In favor of agile enterprises, Lean provides a strategic structure, and principles, and best software development practices. Therefore, Dev Ops converts lean principles and release practices to the software development domain to increase development speed and improve performance, much like a waterfall methodology.
• Extreme Programming: It is a framework to increase the product development consistency and responsiveness of software to evolving consumer requirements. XP supports regular updates, designed to increase efficiency and implement checkpoints at which new consumer specifications can be implemented.

DevOps Tools

DevOps practices focus on reliable monitoring tools to help teams deploy and evolve with their clients efficiently and consistently. These tools from third-parties can simplify repetitive processes and help dev and ops teams handle dynamic settings on a scale. Let’s take a look.

A DevOps Engineer: Role and Responsibilities

Dev Ops Engineer works with developers and IT employees to oversee the code application updates. But there are other various roles that Dev Ops consists of. Let’s understand each role with their responsibilities.

• DevOps Evangelist ➜ Responsible for ensuring that the Dev Ops approach is applied in the product’s end-to-end growth while making a positive environmental difference.
• Automation Expert ➜ Responsible for knowing what should be automated and how a product stack can be integrated with another product stack.
• Release Manager/Release Engineers ➜ Responsible for coordination and management throughout the development to product release and new features implementation.
• Software Developer ➜ Responsible for code development and deployment, unit automated testing, and ongoing monitoring.
• Quality Analyst ➜ Responsible for determining the software quality of product and look out for opportunities to improve any and every feature to bring customer satisfaction.
• Security Engineer ➜ Responsible for monitoring the product’s security & health preventing any downtime or security risk from happening again.

However, it is not compulsory to hire all of the roles as different development processes require different roles.

DevOps Engineer Skill Set

As you may know that depending on the IT organization, job descriptions differ. Smaller businesses look for engineers with broader skillsets and responsibilities. But the ideal skill set should look like as mentioned below:

Technical Skills

• Must hold a degree in MS, site reliability engineering, or other related fields
• Knowledge of open source solutions for testing and continuous deployment
• Programming experience to cover scripting and coding
• Knowledge of database systems
• Different source control systems administrators
• Continuous integration skills for system stability
• Knowledge about Containers
• Skills and knowledge about infrastructure automation tools
• IT development and operations
• Knowledge of cloud computing services

Non-technical Skills

• Communication and interpersonal skills
• Ability to work in cross-functional teams
• Strong analytical skills
• Leadership skills

Conclusion

DevOps is the most creative platform you can use to build your software or applications so that it does not suffer from any vulnerabilities. It is one of the biggest advantages given to us to keep an eye on our actions at any build stage of the production of the application. You just need to be alert to go through all the stages so that you can produce a successful program.

Do you also plan to build apps with DevOps? Need expert guidance? Contact us. We are the best app development firm specialized in building powerful digital experiences.