Needless to say, the world of information technology is developing very rapidly. A wide variety of educational programs, forums, hubs, conferences continue to open more and more new faces for this field of business. More recently, the IT market has been literally buzzing with DevOps terms and associated development processes.
In large enterprises, where each expert dedicated responsible for part of their work, all the processes set up so that employees do not interfere with each other. This seems like a good choice to avoid conflict. But only at first glance. In fact, it turns out that developers and system administrators, for example, often overlapping in the work, and they do not know how to interact properly.
This issue gave a push to the appearance of DevOps. This is a marketing name, which today can be associated both with the type of internal culture of the company and with a separate profession.
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What is DevOps?
Initially, DevOps (development and operations) appeared as a culture of behavior within the company, according to which the communication between software engineers and system administrators should have a well-adjusted, clear format.
If you delve into the history of the origin of this phenomenon, DevOps comes from the principles of the so-called “flexible development”. In 2001, the Agile Manifesto was issued. It is a set of proposals for improving the development process, as well as an attempt to find new methods of work in the IT field.
The main Agile undertakings:
- People and the close interaction between them are things that are more valuable than processes and tools.
- An effective product is more valuable than supporting documentation.
- Customer interaction is more important than settling the conditions of the agreement.
- Flexibility in the development process is more important than strict compliance with the plan.
DevOps technology appeared a little later but became a very good confirmation of many theses of the Agile Manifesto. After all, it focuses on the relationship between the people in the company. correct interaction at breaking down barriers within the company. It is only necessary to use correctly and select the right tools for adjustment.
In general, the methodology DevOps is a set of practices that should reduce software development time, and improve the update process. But it turns out, including administrators and developers in this process is not enough to set DevOps process correctly.
You need qualified specialists who can set up the infrastructure and then customize the software required for it. Our company has extensive experience in applying this technology, and we know exactly how the business benefits of a different domain.
Today, experts acknowledge that it is very difficult for large companies to do without DevOps. small companies can also achieve a more effective combination of personnel, different work processes and current technology, but DevOps is not a necessity like for them. Applying best practices DevOps, the team will be able to key concepts like routine synchronization and coordination of quality at all stages of development.
Surely, at first, it may not be easy for employees. It will be necessary to establish a new workflow rhythm, introduce new habits. But after a very short period of time, this state of affairs will set up stability in the actions of personnel and control in the development of complex products. According to statistics, the number of companies implementing DevOps is increasing by 7% annually.
There are a few clear rules for a company that wants to comply with DevOps responsibilities:
- Formation of a clear goal(s);
- Understanding of the goal by all team members;
- Clear and regular communication, constant sharing of work results;
- Gaining an ability to react promptly to the appeared issues.
By the way, corporations such as Google and Netflix have long implemented DevOps technology to establish an internal corporate culture. And judging by the successes of these companies, they are quite pleased with such innovations.
DevOps from Development to Production Process
To fully implement DevOps in the company workflow, management will need to work hard. But this work will quickly pay off and bring the expected results. To do this, you need to adjust processes.
Selecting efficient tools
One universal set of tools required for DevOps has not yet been identified, but most often used and efficient tech measures include:
- Server for continuous integration. It will process the new software code much faster, with the speed of continuous delivery.
- Software monitoring tools for tracking software performance and availability issues.
- Automated testing tools. They should be used to test how the software works in different environments.
- Software for the exchange of information. They will help improve communication within the team, as well as between different working groups.
Software for orchestrating applications. Such tools are very useful for significant software deployments.
Defining the DevOps environment
For everything to work clearly and smoothly, it is also necessary to think over the type of infrastructure that will ensure the proper level of work of the tools. There are also some controversial, but very useful options, such as:
DevOps for web development
DevOps excellent technology used in web application development. For example, internal company chatting and program for keeping records of eCommerce transactions. DevOps tools allow you to quickly and efficiently build an infrastructure where the application will operate automatically. This greatly speeds up the work.
For example, for the uniformity of the environment, you can use the Docker. After making certain functions, software engineers send the code to the repository. Further, accordingly, the implementation plan DevOps begin the process of continuous integration and delivery.
When the installation is complete and automated verification, the testing process begins using DevOps tools (eg, selenium). It automates browser action in the case of application.
If problems arise during manual testing, software engineers can quickly make changes and updates the problem. This happens at lightning speed, even in the case of some repetition.
Summary
The DevOps phenomenon is the most vivid representation of the principle “People and interaction are more important than processes and tools.” Large companies often start from the opposite. This is a pretty controversial decision. Indeed, strong interaction, cooperation, communication in the process of project implementation can significantly accelerate many working moments in DevOps companies.
The DevOps methodology has taken root so well in companies of various sizes that it has transformed into a separate specialization. This is probably due to the fact that the process of establishing relations between departments and specialists is not so simple and requires constant adjustment.
But this only confirms the fact that organizations that want to increase productivity simply need to take advantage of modern developments. For this, there are companies that professionally set up the DevOps process to help QA and development team.