Companies have begun implementing DevOps techniques for their product development initiatives during the past ten years. With a market value of $7 billion in 2022, this relatively new compound group of techniques has shown significant growth in popularity.
The DevOps revolution is supported by multinational companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Atlassian because of how well it affects software development cycles. Nevertheless, despite the growing use of DevOps techniques, there are a few disadvantages to this methodology that every manager and business owner should be aware of.
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a cross-functional approach to the procedure. The software development lifecycle’s development and operations stages are combined by the DevOps methodology (AKA infrastructure management).
It is essentially the outcome of the organization being streamlined to make it more flexible, dynamic, and ultimately effective. Due to big, constantly growing organizations that consume unnecessary resources and restrict the flexibility of the development team as a whole, this simplification was necessary.
Why is DevOps important?
The quick answer is that DevOps boosts productivity by freeing up developers to focus on what they do best—build amazing software—instead of manually carrying out low-value tasks like manually inspecting log files. DevOps approaches automate repetitive tasks like deploying and running tests, keeping an eye out for issues with live software, and developing deployment methodologies that are robust to issues. Developers have more freedom to create and explore, which boosts output.
Every sector of the technology industry is modernizing its software development processes, from startups to global corporations. The operational gap between the development and operations teams is remarkably closed by DevOps technologies and processes, giving rise to the term “Dev-Ops.” Faster deployments are made possible, productivity and quality are improved, and risk-free production procedures are the result.
How to get started with DevOps?
Select a component
Start little as a first step. Select a part that is presently being produced. A component should have a straightforward code base, few dependencies, and little infrastructure. This part will serve as a testing ground where the team will learn the basics of using DevOps.
Utilize source control based on Git.
A DevOps best practice, version control promotes increased collaboration and quicker delivery cycles. Software engineers can share, collaborate, combine, and back up their work using tools like Bitbucket.
Select a model that branches. An overview of the idea is given in this article. For teams new to Git, GitHub flow is a wonderful place to start because it is straightforward and straightforward to use. Trunk-based development is frequently favored but needs more self-control and makes learning Git more challenging.
Sync source control with project management
Connect the work tracking and source control tools. Developers and management will save a ton of time by having access to everything about a project in one location. An illustration of a Jira problem that has updates from a Git-based source control repository can be found below. Jira issues have a development part that compiles source control work completed for the Jira issue. There was only one branch for this issue, six commits, one pull request, and one build.
Write tests
Tests are necessary for CI/CD pipelines to ensure that the code distributed to diverse environments is functional. Write unit tests for the code first. 90 percent code coverage is an ambitious target, yet at first, it is unattainable. Setting a low baseline for code coverage will allow you to gradually raise it over time. To fix this, you can add tasks to the backlog.
To deploy the component, develop a CI/CD procedure.
When designing a CI/CD pipeline, take into account deploying to several environments. If a team creates a CI/CD pipeline that only deploys to one environment, things will become hard coded. Building CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure and code is crucial. Create a CI/CD pipeline first, then deploy the required infrastructure in each environment. Create a new CI/CD pipeline after that to deploy the code.
Include instrumentation, monitoring, and alarms.
A DevOps team must keep an eye on how the active application behaves in each environment. Do the logs include any errors? Calls to APIs fail prematurely? Do databases lose stability? Check the system’s individual parts for issues. Create a trouble ticket if monitoring finds an issue so that it can be fixed. Write more tests that can detect the issue as part of the solution.
Wrapping up
It may seem like a lot of work to use a DevOps method to get a component into production at first, but it pays off in the long run. Once the foundation is laid, putting the second component into practice should be simpler. Given that the tools are in place, the technologies are understood, and the team has received DevOps training, the procedure for the first component may be used for the second component with just minor modifications.
