Key DevOps principles and practices

Developers and IT operations specialists working in separate silos, as it was 10 years ago, is an outdated approach. Today with frequent releases that occur every day, or even a couple of times a day, require a new procedure for the software development process. That is when DevOps saves the day! DevOps is a collection of experiences and practices aimed to unite two different worlds of development and IT operations departments. With this approach, two key teams join their efforts in building high-quality software fast. Therefore, in this article, we will discuss the benefits of DevOps, the main principles of DevOps and its most important practices.

Why do IT businesses need DevOps?

The importance of DevOps for business cannot be underestimated. According to The 2020 DevOps Trends Survey, 500 developers and IT specialists (99%) admitted that DevOps greatly improved their performance. What are the benefits of DevOps:

  • Partnership and loyalty. DevOps helps develop systems thinking in teams that will definitely unite them in one seamless workflow. 
  • Fast product release. DevOps tools automate all the processes that help boost output and deliver first-rate software more frequently.
  • Unexpected tasks management. DevOps helps with the process of prioritizing tasks so that IT teams have time to deal with unplanned tasks while working on planned ones.

DevOps Principles 

As a rule, experts write about three fundamental principles of DevOps such as automation, continuous delivery and swift reaction to feedback. However, we would like to present one unusual explanation of DevOps principles, which can be learned as CAMS:

  • C is for culture. DevOps approach cannot be applied successfully without high-performing DevOps culture development;
  • A is for automation. When workflows and management processes are automated, IT specialists are focused on the creative part of their work. The great idea is to implement infrastructure as a code (IaC) management approach;
  • M is for measurement and metrics. Good management begins with a strong sense of what exactly plan for the team and how to measure their performance;
  • S is for sharing. Sharing feedback on codes and software quality, sharing feedback from clients to improve the software and service, as well as sharing best practices between teams – what a great DevOps environment is all about.

DevOps Practices 

Here we present the best DevOps practices that are worth following if IT business growth is your ultimate goal. The DevOps practices are:

  • Unbroken development and building. Teams start programming and creating the codes;
  • Continuous integration. Teams check-in codes or code changes in the repository every day;
  • Nonstop testing. Dev and QA teams when uniting forces, provide nonstop product testing, that increases its quality and speeds up its release;
  • Continuous release and deployment. With CI/CD pipeline product delivery is automated, flaws and errors are removed and feedback to developers is provided;
  • Endless tracking and monitoring. It’s very important to monitor all the changes, errors and give a fast reaction to improving;
  • Nonstop optimization. There is always room for improvement. Nonstop work on product and process optimization will definitely enhance team performance and business productivity.

Bottom line

With DevOps methodology growing in popularity, large scope of IT organizations desires to adopt numerous DevOps solutions to deal with a great number of problems connected with product creation and release processes. These companies turn to the best DevOps consulting companies to receive DevOps services. These companies’ DevOps teams provide continuous delivery of software using best DevOps practices, cloud features and appropriate tools.