It used to be simple: write code, test it locally, deploy to prod, everything runs perfectly forever. Right? Wrong! Software development is messy, and growing more complex every day.
Doing DevOps isn’t just committing code once it has passed a prescribed set of unit tests on your machine. Adopting the benefits of DevOps means you’re doing the commit and thinking about the wider view of the processes that kick into gear after you do a “commit.” Doing DevOps right as a developer means you’re also seeing how your code needs to work with surrounding developers’ code.
What dependencies are there on this code? Are other teams going to be using this code?
How will QA build automation tests for this?
How will this be tested in CI?
Can this environment be reproduced to test this code?
Is this code secure, and can we prevent incidents by injecting security throughout the development process?
Once you start thinking of these things, you and your team can set up automation to help all these processes automatically happen for you.
We are here to help you adopt this way of thinking with resources focused on DevOps.
So where do you start?
DevOps best practices: DevOps starts with an agile mindset. It brings in best practices for agile project management, including methodologies like Scrum, artifacts like epics and user stories, and rituals like the daily stand-up. Once the project is set up for success, DevOps practitioners focus on “shifting left” with continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD). And it doesn’t stop at planning and deploying code, DevOps helps teams monitor and operate software to improve mean-time-to-recovery and high uptime.
DevOps tools: Tools work hand-in-hand with practices to help teams excel at DevOps. When it comes to a DevOps toolchain, organizations should look for tools that improve collaboration, reduce context-switching, introduce automation, and leverage observability and monitoring. We recommend an open, integrated toolchain so devs can choose the best-of-breed tools that enable their worklows.
DevOps pipeline: Most devs are familiar with the basics of CI/CD, but building a DevOps pipeline is more than simply merging frequent updates into the main branch. Instead, it incorporates multiple tests throughout the workflow, and includes continuous feedback, monitoring, and operations. Get continuous everything with a DevOps pipeline.
DevOps monitoring: Let’s face it, incidents happen. The old mindset focused on preventing all incidents, and measured “mean-time-since-last-incident”. But CI/CD practices mean that teams can ship faster, and rollback changes easier. Today, DevOps teams focus on “mean-time-to-recovery”, and an upstream, related metric, “mean-time-to-discovery”. Comprehensive monitoring enables elite DevOps teams to monitor system health to prevent incidents, and catch and remediate incidents faster when an outage or breach occurs.
DevSecOps: It’s not enough to patch a vulnerability months after a software update is released, or worse, get caught cleaning up a breach from an attacker. Instead, security must be applied throughout the software development lifecycle to ensure that security is built directly into the product. This mindset resulted in the term “DevSecOps”, which brings together development, operations, and security tools and practices. It recognizes that everyone involved in the process needs to have a security-focused mindset, instead of tacking security on at the end.
DevOps metrics: How do you know if your team is successful with DevOps? DORA includes four key metrics: lead time for changes, change failure rate, deployment frequency, and mean time to recovery. Elite teams ship faster, with higher quality, and less downtime than average- or poor-performing teams.
DevOps automation: Still trying to find more free time? Automation is essential for all phases of the DevOps lifecycle. Devs want to spend more time coding and less time updating tickets for progress. Ops wants more uptime and fewer 2am phone calls. Automation helps both teams accomplish their goals!
Ready to ramp up with DevOps? Learn more about our devops solutions.
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