The 3 Essential DevOps Practices You Need to Know

The history of DevOps dates back to 2009. It was then that the first DevOps conference was held in Belgium and the definition of DevOps culture began to slowly, virally spread through the corridors of IT companies. Since then, the DevOps methodology has been steadily conquering the world of new technologies. It is proving that the integration of software development and operations departments translates into faster, more efficient and safer deployment of products and services.

DevOps is referred to today as a set of best practices, a philosophy, a working culture, a movement or a methodology. Regardless of the nomenclature, the main goal of DevOps is to increase efficiency in software development. What are its tenets and what DevOps all about?

Synergy instead of separation

In what seemed like a bygone era, creating software and testing it were two separate processes in close succession. Only after the system was created could it be tested, which meant a long, arduous time of eliminating bugs and optimizing solutions. This often translated into misunderstandings and polarization of the development and operations team.

DevOps combined competencies and established close collaboration between the aforementioned development and operations teams. This collaboration is accompanied by an orientation towards a high level of communication and the automation of processes and tasks, aiming at increasing their efficiency. In order to streamline the process of releasing a finished product, application or service, there is a focus on ongoing testing, feedback and elimination of errors from the systems, which are transferred to the operations department in 'smaller' parts. This saves both a huge amount of time and the costs associated with optimization work, playing the proverbial ping-pong between development and operations departments.

With DevOps implementation, mutual resentment has been replaced by a series of best practices designed to cultivate development-operations collaboration. Drawing on the experience of The Codest a DevOps outsourcing company, we have developed 3 best DevOps practises that translate into effective operations.

Time is money and customer satisfaction

Widespread digitalization means that clients demand more than just the qualitative results of the projects. Increasingly, it is the time it takes us to deliver products, applications or services that determines whether or not we receive a particular order. Thanks to the close cooperation of the DevOps team, its members are able to make updates practically on the fly, provide customers with new functionalities or eliminate bugs. And, most importantly, we can get back to our audience with continuous and usually satisfactory feedback.

Agile in the service of DevOps

An integral part of DevOps is the Agile methodology, based on the flexibility already mentioned as valuable to DevOps. The two methodologies complement each other, becoming a comprehensive working philosophy adapted to today's market requirements. While DevOps is based on the collaboration of all people involved in a holistically planned product development process, Agile provides the added value of keeping an eye on productivity. In Agile-based programming, the work focuses on the ongoing, rapid creation of software components that can – as a business value – be continuously presented to the customer.

The essence of performance monitoring

The distinguishing feature of DevOps is the real-world translation of this methodology into accelerating the programming process. The best DevOps practice to achieve this is continuous performance monitoring. Only by using the right tools and tracking relevant performance metrics, such as lead time, average time to discovery and problem severity, can the effectiveness of the DevOps approach be determined. The aforementioned tools support the automation and accuracy of the measurements, allowing for accurate optimization of the entire project.

At The Codest, we have a team of experienced DevOps engineers ready to take up a new project. If you are looking for high-tech, high-quality solutions and are committed to efficient implementation – do not hesitate to contact us.