Three steps in DevOps

Three Lessons Learned from the DevOps Journey

In ConnectALL, DevOps by Soumya Menon

DevOps is rapidly moving beyond development and operations into other IT groups – including Security, QA, and Testing – that contribute to the software development lifecycle. Despite its popularity, people in the field have only a vague idea about what DevOps is and what it can do for them.

DevOps gurus claim that DevOps promises to break free from old ways of operating that slow business growth. Many IT leaders who practice DevOps believe it is not only about getting rid of traditional silos and bottlenecks in IT. DevOps is a savior in an age where there are frequent software upgrades and an increased need for cyber security.

If you are trying to join the DevOps movement, you are in luck! This has been our focus for several years and we’re delving deeper into this cultural challenge.

Let’s take a step back and look at three critical elements of DevOps that have emerged along its journey in the last ten years:

1. It is all about speed. A main premise of DevOps is speed and agility. DevOps allows teams that build softwares to develop and deploy it quickly and consistently, simultaneously improving quality and stability. DevOps enables integration and communication between software developers and IT professionals who manage production environments, where building, testing, and deploying software can occur rapidly, frequently, and reliably.

2. It enables cross-training. DevOps serves cross-functional teams. But IT departments do not always believe that they can benefit from meetings and collaboration. Convincing professionals that being part of a cross-functioning team will enable them to accomplish goals faster is key to a DevOps workflow. It extends beyond the concept of agile, continuous integration, and continuous delivery into the social aspect of IT by bridging the divide between development, operations, support, and management teams.

3. It lowers security risks. Security vulnerability is rising as software becomes more complex. As DevOps allows IT to drive changes more quickly, it becomes easier to spot and fix vulnerabilities, and therefore deployment or security updates and patches are faster. This lowers the risks of security threats such as data leakage and ransomware.

While some DevOps experts call it a journey, as if DevOps is an enlightenment that takes a long time to achieve, others call it a process that needs meticulous implementation.

Want to dig deeper? Download a DevOps report from Atlassian and xMatters and learn about DevOps’ recent trends, benefits, and challenges.

Watch this space for more on DevOps and enterprise application integration strategies. Also, we are very close to the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2017, so you’ll get lots of updates. Still interested in attending the largest DevOps conference of the year? Here’s how you can get your DOES 2017 and 15% off registration. Don’t miss out!

What is Lance Knight talking about at DOES 2017?

If you do decide to attend the event, here’s something to give you more perspective: Lance Knight, Go2Group COO, Field Operations, will talk on Monday, November 13 from 2:35-3:35 PM about “how systems thinking and lean principles can be used to find dependencies and drive predictability in your system of delivery.” In the 60-minute session, he will establish the relationship between systems thinking and software development, and discuss how techniques like value stream mapping will help the DevOps initiative, in turn using integration to improve velocity. You’ll also learn how to improve your system by using system thinking and lean principles to remove wastes like “transportation waste” with system integration.