Role of DevOps in Software Development Process
DevOps, a term introduced by Patrik Debois in 2009, combines “DEV” and “OP” to facilitate collaboration between development and operations teams. It helps to overcome the challenges of the traditional software development process by using the Agile development process.
DevOps aims to promote teamwork across the entire software development cycle to meet user needs, deliver user-friendly products, and deploy them efficiently. Moreover, DevOps speeds up development time, reduces cost, automates the build-test-release cycle, and continuous integration encourages enterprises to contact consulting companies around the globe.
In custom software development, the DevOps methodology involves practices and techniques that help teams improve the speed and effectiveness of their projects. It includes automating tasks, managing applications, maintenance, and more. And with database DevOps practices, teams can extend these benefits to data management, ensuring that database changes are automated, monitored, and aligned with application updates.
The following are the role of DevOps in the software development process.
#1: Removes communication barriers within teams and departments
Let’s say there are companies Company A and Company B.
Company A follows a traditional IT structure, where the development and operations teams work separately. The developers focus on creating software, while the operations team handles the deployment and maintenance. Because of two separate teams, there is always a communication gap, which leads to delays in the development process. This results in errors and bugs in the final product.
On the other hand, Company B follows a DevOps approach, promoting close collaboration between the development and operations teams. This builds a strong culture of collaboration and communication between the teams, which helps in the early detection and resolution of potential issues. Therefore, by working together, they can optimize the code for the production environment to release them more quickly with fewer errors.
As a result, Company B improves software quality and provides a better user experience for its customers, thereby staying ahead of its competition by releasing updates more quickly. Meanwhile, Company A struggles with delays, miscommunication, and errors, affecting its reputation and productivity.
With DevOps, developers at a software development company can easily understand and adapt to the production environment. They can make small adjustments without disrupting the overall production, making incident management more simple and straightforward.
#2: Streamlines process by continuous integration
Suppose a mobile app development company is working on developing a new app for its target audiences. It uses DevOps to streamline the development process and improve the quality of its app. The company can ensure that any changes made to the code are integrated and tested periodically by implementing continuous integration methods. This helps companies to identify and fix any issues on an early basis. During release, it lowers the chances of risk associated with bugs and errors appearing in the app.
#3: Boosts continuous delivery
DevOps automates the software development process by using continuous delivery methods. It means that whenever someone changes the code, it is automatically built, tested, and deployed to a test environment, and the new software is quickly delivered.
For example, a game app development company wants to add a new feature to its already launched gaming app. Here, the team can make the required changes to the code, and DevOps tools will automatically build a new version of the app, test it, and deploy it to a test environment. Then, the team can check if the added feature works as expected and fix any bugs.
Once the changes are approved and tested, DevOps tools will automatically deploy the new version of the app to the production environment, where users can access it. This automated approach saves time and effort. It also ensures that any changes in the code are quickly integrated, tested, and deployed, leading to faster and better software development cycles.
Major Challenges in DevOps Implementation
Enterprises around the globe have adopted DevOps in their work culture, which is helping them in multiple ways. However, does the DevOps implementation take without any hurdles? The answer to this is “No”. Although DevOps consulting companies assist businesses in smooth adaptation, it comes with some challenges.
Challenges faced by software development companies in DevOps implementation
#1: Resistance to existing organizational culture
The core of DevOps is to bring cultural shifts in organizational thinking. However, not everyone in your team can easily understand this and adapt to these shifts.
Hence, it is predictable that the team will take more time to understand the DevOps approach for seamless collaboration between development and operations. So, involving all team members in the transition process is a wise choice to address this issue.
#2: Selecting the right tools
Multiple tools are available for a software development team in the entire development lifecycle, but selecting the correct tools is important to get the desired results. In that case, an experienced consulting company can help select the right tool for continuous deployment and successful implementation of projects.
#3: Resistance towards cross-functional teams
Once DevOps is in place, the concept of traditional teams working in distinct divisions or silos does not work. The concept of cross-functional teams exists by integrating front end, back end, infrastructure, testing, maintenance, and quality assurance.
Businesses must invest in bringing this organizational change and how they think about teams concerning technical and interpersonal skills. Proper and continued collaboration and communication within software development are a must to shorten the development life cycle.
#4: Need for automation testing
DevOps depends on automation testing for improving productivity and quality. However, it is not easy, like just picking a tool and running it. You need an automation testing strategy to reduce maintenance costs without reducing the software performance. Here, we suggest that an organization contact a software development company with experience in using DevOps.
Final Thoughts
To conclude, the role of DevOps in the development process enables developers and operations teams to collaborate closely and solve problems early in the development cycle, allowing companies to deliver products quickly to market. Like any other changes, DevOps also comes with challenges for software development companies. Companies must overcome these challenges for faster and better product delivery, operations, scalability, resource utilization, innovation, visibility, automation, issue resolution, and reduced complexity.
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