Modern market conditions make new software development demands. One of the main issues nowadays is time. And the main goal of development teams is to reduce the time of executing a project. That's why in this article we decided to discuss how to maximize the effectiveness of your team and how to meet business requirements in a fast developing IT sphere.
To achieve this we need new methods and approaches which can establish an effective communication process between different functional departments of a company. One of the latest approaches which helps to cross this barrier is DevOps methodology. To understand how DevOps works we need to shed light on the main terms and DevOps principles.
DevOps definition
There is no clear explanation of what this methodology really is. What is more important is to understand the main DevOps goals. Here are most of them:
DevOps goals
Many novices want to know the difference between Agile and DevOps. DevOps is closely related to Agile methodology but they are not the same. In addition to the interaction between the development and testing departments, the operating and deployment department is also connected to the product creation process.
Basically, DevOps automation tools are focused on administration and automatization processes. However, unlike a usual administrator, DevOps works with programmers more than with users. The main purposes of DevOps support are automation and bundling of software for the full development cycle.
To be more clear, let's give a simple example. A company can use different programming languages to create a product. Here, DevOps task is to be able to configure different environments for the operation of this software. Nodejs, PHP, and Ruby are three absolutely different programming languages, however, for a client, they are just three different sites. This customer doesn't even realize how the systems work from the inside (web-server, databases, backend, frontend and so on), so DevOps does all that. DevOps structure is also responsible for the server (monitoring, load optimization).
The most important thing here is to build a dialogue between all parties. The need for such a dialogue is justified by the fact that a poorly organized process of interaction leads to a situation when a well-developed products cannot be correctly implemented. As a consequence, the customer and the end-users of the product are not satisfied with the result, the project fails and the timeline and cost of the development are constantly growing.
DevOps is aimed at the active interaction and integration of development specialists and information technology specialists. Such established communication can help organizations to create and update software products and services faster. Let's look at the reasons for the disruption of the interaction between the company's departments:
Geographical division
The geographical division of the development process as well as the IT system adjustment (for instance, different offices, departments, buildings, and in some cases, even countries).
Different tools
Different tools used for the development and maintenance of IT systems. In some cases, various issues can appear even when the same set of tools was used, but in a different way.
Misunderstanding
Each party understands the process of product implementation in its own way. Failures occur when IT professionals and developers implement software solutions each in their environment, change the location of files and the configuration of the environment, etc.
Lack of communication
Lack of continuity of interaction and communication. When bugs and failures in the system have accumulated, the implementation process becomes a chaotic educational process. Why does it happen? Because the issues that have been accumulating for a long time should be solved immediately.
In order to speed up all processes and avoid downtime, you may need the DevOps services. The process of software development and delivery, as a rule, consists of the following steps: planning, development, testing, and deployment.
According to the methodology, the project is divided into smaller parts, in which the product is implemented in stages. It is performed, first, to present a product to the audience as quickly as possible and receive feedback, and secondly, because the phased integration is more productive. You can find the main principles of the DevOps methodology below.