DevOps is a short term for two titles – Development and Operations. That’s why there are a lot of misunderstandings about DevOps as combining development and IT Operations. But DevOps is an independent approach that arose more than ten years ago. The main goal of DevOps is the automation of development processes. There are a lot of tools and practices which allow making all these processes. A lot of companies are interested in DevOps as a service, so we decided to explain the basic DevOps terms and principles.
DevOps principles
DevOps is not only a powerful toolset of automation. It is also a culture and philosophy. The DevOps approach is connected to Agile methodology. Agile is a set of rules about flexible software development and strong cohesiveness in the team. Agile highlights the importance of conversation in the team and mutual response.
Let’s have a look at DevOps principles for a better understanding of the DevOps at all.
- Infrastructure as Code or IaC. There are three basic roles in a software development team: developer, QA engineer and sysadmin or DevOps. The developer writes code, QA engineer tests code and DevOps/sysadmin deploys code. DevOps approach allows automating the deployment process for testing. DevOps engineer creates deployment infrastructure and makes a special textual file called manifest. This file contains information about the infrastructure. The developer can change some parameters and receive the new infrastructure version for tests. It helps make tests faster and don’t distract a DevOps engineer from current tasks.
- CI/CD pipeline. DevOps approach enables making CI/CD pipelines. This is a process of Continuous Integration and Delivery of the product. CI means developers need to integrate code with a common shared repository and CD automates the delivery of the product to end-users. As a result, the whole development process becomes more efficient.
- Team cohesiveness. DevOps approach also works with teams and their relations. Better communication makes all processes more efficient. DevOps attends a lot to management processes too. DevOps transformation includes team training to use new tools and practices.
These are basic principles, DevOps approach includes many more principles and practices but for basic understanding, this is enough.
Benefits of DevOps transformation
The majority of companies are afraid of DevOps or any other transformation because it needs investment and changes in the inner processes. To understand if you need transformation or not, you should know the main benefits at least.
DevOps transformation will bring you a cost reduction and process efficiency. At first, you will invest in new tools and creating new processes. When DevOps start working, you’ll have faster releases, increased competitiveness and, as a result, you will have bigger profits. Also, you’ll have a more satisfied team and users because the process of software development becomes smoother and releases become faster.
Final thoughts about DevOps
DevOps is a powerful instrument for software development. It makes the development lifecycle smoother and easier for the team. DevOps provides automation of the inner processes. It based on the Agile methodology that provides flexibility and mutual respect.
Nowadays DevOps is the most modern approach to software development. It exists for more than ten years and is still developing. There are a lot of open-source and paid tools, so you can choose the most appropriate for your company. Don’t be afraid of DevOps transformation, it is great and beneficial for any IT company.
