We often hear the word “DevOps” but what does it mean?
DevOps is the word used to describe one of the most popular sets of practices for the collaboration between development and IT operations in the technical world. This practice aims to improve the system development life cycle and deliver a better quality service in a faster time.
DevOps involves operations staff making use of many techniques traditionally utilized by developers for their systems work. A CICD pipeline describes the steps required to connect the spaces between development and operation activities to deliver a new software version. This includes source control, testing, and creating an Agile development process with teams enforcing automation in the building, testing, and deployment of applications.
It is Agile methodology that has influenced DevOps practice. It has taken the principle of combining service delivery and system interaction and extended the limits beyond the code to cover the whole service.
DevOps is essential for a company wishing to improve its software’s performance, speed, and capability by overcoming obstacles and building shared ownership between stakeholders.
DevOps involves learning the tools to bring it together, but it also requires familiarity with the whole DevOps philosophy, including the principles and processes.
Learning the tools involves becoming accomplished with a large set of processes and principles. It is certainly possible to learn some of the DevOps tools but much more challenging to implement in real life. This is because DevOps involves a cultural change to an IT organization and utilizing skilled DevOps engineers.
There is often a conflict between the way software is deployed against the way it should be deployed. This creates a wall of confusion that affects stakeholders including the customer and the organization.
A successful DevOps engineer will constantly be upskilling themselves to keep ahead of changes to bring about new ideas and encourage versatility. It is more than having good technical knowledge as it involves being constantly adaptable and embracing change.
Unless you already have an in-house DevOps team, your organization will benefit hugely from an outsourcing approach. If cloud software construction is not already a significant part of your core business model, you will be unlikely to attract a good DevOps engineer to work in-house.