Development (Dev) and operations (Ops) (DevOps)
DevOps combines development (Dev) and operations (Ops) with the aim of increasing efficiency, speed, and security for software development and delivery as compared to traditional processes. … defines DevOps as having people working together to think through, build and deliver secure software. DevOps encompasses different concepts including continuous development continuous delivery, continuous integration, and continuous automation.
DevOps aims at executing IT projects that meet business needs and thus can coexist with agile and other continuous software development paradigms and IT service management frameworks such as lean and six sigma and information technology infrastructure library. IT professionals are working on improving DevOps to include business (BizDevOps) and security (DevSecOps).
How DevOps work
DevOps aims at improving software throughout the software development lifecycle and entails an infinite loop of planning, coding, building, testing, releasing, deploying, operating, monitoring, and planning through feedback.
Planning: The phase helps define business value and requirements. Tools such as Jira can help track known issues and in project management.
Coding: Entails software design. Tools such as GitHub or GitLab may be used.
Building: Entails managing software builds and versions. Automated tools may be used to help compile and package code for future release. Source code repositories or package repositories are used.
Testing: The phase entails continuous testing to ensure optimal code quality.
Deploying: entails the use of tools such as Jira, OpenStack, OpenShift, or Docker to manage. Coordinate, schedule, and automate product releases into production.
Operate: Entails the management of software during production through tools such as Puppet, PowerShell, or Salt.
Monitoring: Entails the use of tools such as Slack, Nagios, or Wireshark to identify and collect information about issues from a specific software release in production.
Common DevOps practices
Continuous development: entails version-control mechanism and spans the planning and codding phases of the DevOps lifecycle.
Continuous testing: entails automated, prescheduled, and continues code testing as code is written or updated. Continuous testing speeds the delivery of code to production.
Continuous integration (CI): entails the use of configuration tools with other test and development tools to track whether developed code is ready for production. The practice requires rapid and continuous feedback between testing and development to ensure code issues are resolved promptly.
Continuous delivery: automates the delivery of code changes after testing to a preproduction or staging environment. The code changes are ready for promotion into production.
Continuous deployment (CD): automates the release of new or changed code into production. With CD code or feature changes may be released several times in a day.
Continuous monitoring: involves continuous monitoring of code in operation and the underlying infrastructure that supports it. The practice also provides for a feedback loop that reports bugs or issues then makes its way back to development.
Infrastructure as code: entails automating the provisioning of infrastructure required for a software release. For example, developers may create a storage volume on demand from OpenShift.
Benefits of DevOps
Collaboration and communication: eliminates traditional organizational silos that may inhibit creativity and workflows by bringing together developers, business leaders, IT operations, and application stakeholders. Collaboration and open communication ensures that built software is designed, developed, tested, deployed and managed in a manner that best for the business and users.
Product quality: DevOps is cyclic and iterative thus ensures that products are tested continuously before each release thus ensuring that software released has fewer bugs and has better availability as compared to software created with traditional paradigms.
Development outcomes: unlike traditional development methodologies such as waterfall whose requirements and outcomes are codified years in advance of the actual development process, with DevOps, projects start small and are later systematically refined and functionality added throughout the projects lifecycle. This ensures that businesses remain competitive and are more responsive to changing market needs, and user demands (Bigelow, Countermanche, & Gillis, n.d.).
Better management of unplanned work: unplanned work negatively impacts team productivity. DevOps has established processes and clear prioritization thus development and operations teams can better manage unplanned work.
Improved customer focus: provides quality and testable products to the customer fast. Feedback loop ensures developers and end users are on the same page thus increasing customer satisfaction levels.
Reduced cost of software development: reduces cost of human resource and automating release pipelines.
Increase automation: reduces the chances of manual errors and human dependency.
Challenges with DevOps
Adoption of new tools and tool integration: deciding on the tools for development, testing, and deploying the tools to ensure functionality can be challenging.
Moving from legacy application to microservices: holding on to legacy technology and increased complexity could limit the adoption of DevOps.
Security concerns: the team must work towards achieving speedy development without compromising security. This can be achieved through adoption of DevSecOps which introduces security considerations at the beginning of development and deployment.
Managing multiple environments: managing multiple environments can be complex and may go out of control.
Initial Investment and Complexity: DevOps requires significant upfront investment in tools, training, and infrastructure, which can be challenging for smaller companies.
Conclusion
DevOps is transforming software development by enabling faster and more reliable software delivery. The advantages of DevOps, such as improved collaboration and communication, improved product quality, improved development outcomes, better management of unplanned work, improved customer focus, reduced cost of software development, and increased automation increase the likelihood of adoption. However, challenges such as security concerns, initial investment and complexity, and resistance to change remain. The integration of security (DevSecOps) and BizDevOps shows promise in improving the quality and efficiency of software production even further.
References
Bigelow. S. J., Countermanche, M., & Gillis, A. S. (n.d.). What is DevOps? Meaning, methodology and guide. Retrieved January 29, 2025, from https://www.techtarget.com/searchitoperations/definition/DevOps
Buchanan, I. (n.d.). 4 key benefits of DevOps. Retrieved from https://www.atlassian.com/devops/what-is-devops/benefits-of-devops
Kaur, G. (n.d.). Top 10 benefits of DevOps: Features and uses. Retrieved from https://bigohtech.com/benefits-of-devops/#Benefits_of_DevOps
Rudder, C. (2017). How to explain DevOps in plain English. Retrieved from https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2019/8/devops-explained-plain-english#:~:text=%E2%80%9CDevOps%20empowers%20developers%20to%20own,%2C%20developer%2Dmanaged%20infrastructure.%E2%80%9D
Subramanian, P. S. (2024). 10 major DevOps challenges and issues. Retrieved from https://www.ideas2it.com/blogs/devops-challenges https://www.ideas2it.com/blogs/devops-challenges