Before DevOps came into picture, most of the companies were following traditional waterfall models. While the waterfall model was working fine for decades, suddenly there were lots of problems that started to show up on the delivery front.

Few reasons why waterfall methods suddenly started falling short are changing customer expectations, rise in multi-screen customer journeys, and increase in usage of APIs and third-party integrations.

Software development teams started falling back of the curve and deliveries were hampered due to the frequent change in requirements. And from there, software community and enterprises have realized that they need to change the approach used for years. This led to the formation of DevOps philosophy/movement/methodology.

Introduction

What is DevOps?

DevOps lifecycle and how DevOps works

DevOps framework

Common DevOps Challenges and How to Overcome them

DevOps Best Practices

Ready to measure success in DevOps – Know Why, What, and How

DevOps and Kubernetes

DevOps and Test Automation

DevOps and Security

DevOps Tool Chain

Future of DevOps

Few Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Introduction

DevOps is a movement that started in 2007s because of shortfalls of waterfall developmental methodology. DevOps is an approach to software development and deployment that optimizes workflows and supports collaboration between different (Dev, Test, Ops, and Business Users) teams.

With DevOps, organizations can streamline processes, release new features more frequently, reduce risk, and increase efficiency to build quality software faster. Many enterprises are adopting this methodology as it solves challenges like siloed functions, manual testing, and unscalable architecture issues. DevOps is an important topic, but what does it mean for IT professionals and what tools, frameworks, and methods do it contain? Let’s take a look at it in a new light.

What is DevOps?

DevOps has gained significant popularity; thanks to the benefits it has delivered for enterprises and software development teams. A DevOps approach to testing and deploying software optimizes workflows and facilitates team collaboration. DevOps streamlines processes, delivers new features more frequently, reduces risk, and increases efficiency so organizations can build better software faster. The DevOps methodology addresses two significant functions, Development and Operations however, organizations should also be aware of other key areas when implementing DevOps.

Collaborating, architecting, governing, and creating a culture fall under these categories. During the collaboration, different departments in an organization interact with one another. As part of DevOps, cross-functional communication is encouraged between development, quality assurance, and operations teams.

DevOps lifecycle and how DevOps works

Software testing is an integrated part of the development lifecycle and comprises six fundamental stages:

• Planning: In this stage, the development and operations teams work together to plan the project and define the requirements.
• Code development: In this stage, developers write code and commit it to a version control repository.
• Code review: In this stage, the code is reviewed by other members of the development team to ensure that it meets the required standards.
• Testing: In this stage, the code is tested to ensure that it functions as intended.
• Deployment: In this stage, the code is deployed to production or staging environments
• Monitoring: In this stage, the system is monitored to ensure that it is functioning as intended.

The DevOps process works by automating many of the tasks involved in the software development and delivery process. This includes automating the build, test, and deployment processes, as well as integrating testing and deployment processes. By automating these tasks, organizations can release software faster and more frequently, while still maintaining high levels of quality and stability.

DevOps also emphasizes the importance of collaboration and communication between development and operations teams. By working together, these teams can more effectively identify and resolve issues, and can improve the overall efficiency of the software development process.

DevOps framework

There are many different frameworks that organizations can use to implement DevOps practices. Some common ones include:

• Cultural Model: Culture, which emphasizes the importance of creating a culture of continuous improvement and experimentation.
• Workflow Model:: Flow, which focuses on maximizing the flow of work from development to operations and back.
• Feedback Model: Feedback, which emphasizes the importance of fast and continuous feedback to drive learning and improvement.
• The CALMS model: The CALMS model stands for Culture, Automation, Lean, Measurement, and Sharing. It is a framework for understanding the key elements that organizations need to consider when implementing DevOps.
• The Lean Startup: The Lean Startup is a framework that emphasizes the importance of rapid experimentation and learning in the development of new products and services. It can be used to guide the implementation of DevOps practices.
• The Spotify model: The Spotify model is a framework that emphasizes the importance of small, autonomous teams in delivering software quickly and reliably. It is based on the practices used by the music streaming company Spotify.
• The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Well-Architected Framework: The AWS Well-Architected Framework is a set of best practices for designing, operating, and maintaining systems in the cloud. It can be used as a guide for implementing DevOps practices in cloud-based environments.

Common DevOps Challenges and How to Overcome them

Challenges

1. Culture clash:

   One of the biggest challenges of implementing DevOps is cultural change. DevOps requires a shift in mindset and approach to software development, which can be difficult for organizations that are used to traditional, siloed approaches with big teams.

2. Lack of knowledge related to tools and automation:

   Another common challenge is the lack of appropriate tools and automation. In order to be effective, DevOps requires the use of a wide range of tools and automation to support continuous integration, delivery, and deployment.

   This requires certain skill sets, the current talent crunch across industries present an apt case study how we are falling back to address the talent up-skilling and re-skilling.

3. Lack of collaboration:

   DevOps relies heavily on collaboration between developers and operations teams, but many organizations struggle with communication and collaboration between these groups.

4. Security concerns:

   Another common challenge is the integration of security into the DevOps process. Ensuring that security is integrated into all stages of the development process can be difficult, especially for organizations that are used to addressing security after the fact.

5. Management Buy-In:

   Increasingly, applications are composed of many small components and microservices that are easy to modify and deploy. The fast-paced nature of these environments requires almost immediate changes and deployments. There may be multiple security reviews, operations, code reviews, and change control processes to be completed by a team.

   The problem is that there is often an extensive line to wait in for reviews, resulting in the review process slipping another week. This will result in DevOps failure.

6. Initial Inertia:

   Any change in our comfort zone can make us less productive or negatively affect our psychological wellbeing. DevOps is quite challenging in its initial phase since some individuals may not be comfortable working with a different team. Co-working can sometimes be difficult. As a result, this can raise a voice of distress within the organization.

Solutions

To address these challenges, organizations may need to implement a range of solutions, including:

• Training and education: Providing training and education on DevOps principles and best practices can help organizations understand the benefits and challenges of the approach.
• Implementing the right tools: Investing in the right tools and automation can help organizations streamline their development process and support continuous integration, delivery, and deployment.
• Fostering collaboration: Encouraging collaboration and communication between developers and operations teams can help organizations overcome cultural and communication barriers.
• Integrating security: Incorporating security into the DevOps process can be challenging, but it is essential to ensure that software applications and systems are secure. This may involve adopting shift-left security practices, integrating security tools and processes into the development process, and implementing automated security testing.

DevOps Best Practices

DevOps is claimed to be fully functional in many organizations. However, DevOps is more than a workflow and a few tools that can be implemented and moved on once your organization has adopted it.

Keeping it alive requires continuous optimization, creativity, and flexibility. You can think of it as a philosophy, a culture and mindset. Despite implementing organizational and tool changes and tools, an organization might be missing out on some of DevOps' benefits.

To help you make the most of your DevOps strategy, let's look at some DevOps best practices you can implement to take your investment to the next level.

• Automation

Every successful DevOps strategy begins with automation. By automating, you can reduce labour, speed up your delivery pipelines, and scale your DevOps teams.

Testing, monitoring, discovering errors, and remediation traditionally relied on limited automation and involved a lot of manual intervention. For monolithic applications, this works. DevOps lifecycle automation is vital to increase velocity and quality as modern microservice-based applications and digital transformation put even more pressure on IT.

Your DevOps team can therefore produce reliable, secure, and consistent software more frequently.

• Monitoring and observability

From pre-production to production, monitoring and observability are essential. Monitoring and observability are crucial to detecting and pinpointing the root causes of issues in your DevOps workflows, while automating as many processes as possible increases efficiency.

Various tools provide dashboards and data for tracking system health. It takes more than just dashboard data to develop an effective observability strategy that yields actionable insights into systems throughout the DevOps toolchain.

1. Adopt a standard set of tools to make your systems observable. Automate the process of instrumenting and detecting anomalies using an AI-based observation platform.
2. Ensure end-to-end visibility for all applications or environments from pre-production to production.
3. Analyse an event or transaction in the context of processes upstream and downstream from it to understand its business impact.
4. AI-powered detection and analysis to pinpoint root causes and trigger auto-remediation as soon as possible.

Implementing this practice ensures that you will be able to identify failures before customers notice them.

• AIOps

IT teams should make use of data to test and deliver code more effectively, as well as to monitor services more efficiently. It is difficult to process the vast amounts of information generated by today's applications manually.

A code-level AI engine can continuously analyse all observable data, giving developers the power to identify problems, solve them, and quickly resolve them.

Incorporating artificial intelligence into your software development, testing, security, delivery, and release processes provides you with the ability to enhance functionality and automate as well as continuously monitor the performance of deployed software far more efficiently than if you were to perform these tasks manually.

• Building resilience with chaos engineering

To build resilience into distributed production software systems, chaos engineering subjects' software to failures in a simulated production environment. Outages, slowdowns, excessive loads, and other unforeseeable circumstances are prevented by this practice.

It is valuable to test the performance of your application under random and extreme conditions to ensure your team delivers highly available, durable, and reliable systems under any circumstance. The only way to achieve this is by testing in a production environment with real users and real loads.

• Shift-left Security

Shift-left security refers to the practice of shifting security responsibilities and activities earlier in the development process. This means that security considerations are considered earlier in the design phase, rather than being added as an afterthought. The goal of shift-left security is to identify and address potential security vulnerabilities as early in the development process as possible, in order to reduce the risk of those vulnerabilities being exploited in production.

• How about shift-right security? That’s important too

Shift-right security, on the other hand, refers to the practice of shifting security responsibilities and activities later in the development process. This means that security considerations are addressed after the product has been developed and is in use. The goal of shift-right security is to identify and address any security vulnerabilities that may have been missed during the development process.

Enterprises are realizing that maintaining visibility in the production environment is essential after several years of "shifting left". It has been observed that there have been many successful attacks against Kubernetes environments - ranging from the malicious images that were introduced into Docker hub in 2020 to recent attacks by "cryptojackers" against Azure and Tesla. As a result, 44% of enterprises plan to adopt new runtime security controls (shift-right)

There are several reasons why automated security (DevSecOps) can and should bring shift-right activities into production environments:

• Continuous monitoring: Automated security tools can continuously monitor production environments for potential security vulnerabilities or attacks. This allows organizations to quickly identify and address any potential security threats in real-time.
• Improved efficiency: Automated security tools can handle many security tasks and activities more efficiently than humans. This allows organizations to free up their security teams to focus on more high-level tasks and strategies.
• Increased visibility: Automated security tools can provide greater visibility into the security posture of an organization's production environments. This allows organizations to better understand the potential risks and vulnerabilities they face and take proactive steps to mitigate them.
• Faster response times: Automated security tools can help organizations respond to potential security threats more quickly. This is especially important in the case of zero-day vulnerabilities or other rapidly evolving threats.
• Cost savings: Automated security tools can help organizations save money on security-related tasks and activities. This is because they can handle many tasks more efficiently and at a lower cost than humans.

Both shift-left and shift-right security approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages. Shift-left security can help identify and address vulnerabilities early on, reducing the risk of security breaches, but it can also slow down the development process and increase costs. Shift-right security can be more cost-effective, but it also carries the risk that vulnerabilities may not be discovered until after the product has been deployed.

Overall, automated security tools can bring significant benefits to organizations looking to shift security responsibilities and activities into production environments. By leveraging the power of automation, organizations can improve their security posture, respond more quickly to potential threats, and save money on security-related tasks.

Ready to measure success in DevOps – Know Why, What, and How

A primary goal of DevOps is to blur the line between developers and operations teams, enabling developers to collaborate more effectively with system administrators. Measurement and assessment of metrics are key components of managing DevOps workflows and tracking progress towards achieving high-level goals. Metrics for DevOps help identify and solve bottlenecks in the process and directly reveal the performance of the pipeline. Technical capabilities and team processes can be tracked with these metrics.

There are several reasons why organizations may want to measure success in DevOps:

• To understand the effectiveness of DevOps practices: By measuring the outcomes of DevOps practices, organizations can determine whether they are achieving the desired results and identify areas for improvement.
• To improve processes and increase efficiency: By tracking key metrics, organizations can identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in their processes and work to improve them.
• To demonstrate the value of DevOps to stakeholders: By showing the positive impact of DevOps on key business metrics, organizations can demonstrate the value of DevOps to stakeholders such as executives, shareholders, and customers.

In terms of what to measure, there are many different metrics that organizations can use to track the success of DevOps practices. Some common ones include:

• Deployment frequency: Measuring the number of deployments per day, week, or month can help organizations understand how quickly they are able to deliver software.
• Lead time for changes: Measuring the time it takes for code changes to be deployed to production can help organizations understand how quickly they are able to respond to customer needs and market demands.
• Mean time to recovery (MTTR): Measuring the time it takes to recover from failures or outages can help organizations understand their reliability and resilience.
• Customer satisfaction: Measuring customer satisfaction can help organizations understand the impact of DevOps practices on their users.

There are many different approaches organizations can take to measuring the success of DevOps practices. Some common ones include:

• Data-driven approaches: Organizations can use data and analytics tools to track key metrics and understand the impact of DevOps practices on their business.
• Benchmarking: Organizations can compare their performance to industry benchmarks or to their own past performance to understand how they are doing.
• Surveys and interviews: Organizations can gather feedback from stakeholders through surveys or interviews to understand the impact of DevOps practices on their business.
• A/B testing: Organizations can use A/B testing to compare the performance of different approaches and understand which ones are most effective.

DevOps and Kubernetes

DevOps and Linux® containers are complementary methods for creating a cloud-native development style. As a result of containers, you are able to develop, deliver, integrate, and automate all of these processes in a unified environment.

The Kubernetes container orchestration platform is the modern solution for automating Linux container operations. You can easily and efficiently manage clusters of Linux containers running on public, private, or hybrid clouds with Kubernetes.

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform that is often used in conjunction with DevOps practices. It allows organizations to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

In a DevOps environment, Kubernetes can be used to automate the deployment of code changes, making it easier for organizations to release software faster and more frequently. It can also be used to scale applications up or down as needed, helping to ensure that systems are able to handle changing workloads.

Kubernetes can be integrated into a CI/CD pipeline, allowing organizations to automate the build, test, and deployment processes for their applications. This can help to improve the efficiency and reliability of the software development process.

It's important to note that while Kubernetes can be a useful tool in a DevOps environment, it is not required for implementing DevOps practices. There are many other tools and platforms that organizations can use to automate the software development and delivery process.

DevOps and Test Automation

Test automation is a key practice in DevOps that involves using software to automatically run tests on code changes. This can include unit tests, integration tests, and acceptance tests.

Test automation is important in DevOps for several reasons:

• It enables organizations to test code changes more quickly and frequently, which can help them release software faster and more reliably.
• It helps to ensure that code changes do not introduce new bugs or regressions, which can help organizations maintain the stability and quality of their systems.
• It can reduce the amount of manual testing that is required, which can save time and effort.
• It can provide faster feedback to developers, which can help them identify and fix issues more quickly.

To implement test automation in a DevOps environment, organizations typically integrate test automation tools into their CI/CD pipeline. This allows tests to be automatically run every time code is committed to the version control repository.

It's important to note that test automation is just one part of the overall testing process in DevOps. Organizations should also incorporate manual testing and other testing practices, such as exploratory testing and user acceptance testing, to ensure that their systems are thoroughly tested and of high quality.

DevOps and Security

Security is an important consideration in DevOps, as the rapid iteration and deployment of code changes can potentially introduce new vulnerabilities into systems. To address this, organizations can implement a number of practices to ensure that their systems remain secure:

• Secure coding practices: Training developers in secure coding practices can help to prevent security vulnerabilities from being introduced into the codebase.
• Testing: Incorporating testing into the software development process, including both automated and manual testing, can help to identify and fix security issues before code is deployed.
• Code reviews: Conducting code reviews can help to identify potential security issues and ensure that code changes meet security standards.
• Vulnerability management: Implementing a vulnerability management process, including regular vulnerability assessments and patch management, can help to ensure that systems are secure and up to date.
• Security in the CI/CD pipeline: Integrating security checks into the CI/CD pipeline can help to ensure that code changes are secure before they are deployed.

By adopting these practices, organizations can build security into the software development process and ensure that their systems are secure and compliant. It's important to note that security is an ongoing process and organizations should regularly review and update their security practices to stay current with changing threats and regulations.

DevOps Tool Chain

A DevOps toolchain is a collection of tools that are used to support the software development and delivery process. These tools can be used to automate tasks, manage code changes, and monitor systems.

There are many different tools that can be included in a DevOps toolchain, and the specific tools that are used will depend on the needs of the organization. Here are some common categories of tools that might be included in a DevOps toolchain, along with some examples of tools that might be included in each category:

• Git: a version control system for tracking changes in source code.
• Jenkins: an open-source automation server for building, testing, and deploying software.
• Docker: a containerization platform for building, distributing, and running portable applications.
• Ansible: a configuration management and orchestration tool for automating infrastructure and applications.
• Kubernetes: an open-source platform for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
• Nagios: an open-source monitoring tool for infrastructure and application performance.
• Splunk: a platform for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing machine-generated data from applications, servers, and devices.
• Terraform: a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently.

In addition to these tools, organizations may also use a variety of other tools to support their DevOps practices, including testing tools, configuration management tools, and deployment automation tools. By using a toolchain to automate and streamline their processes, organizations can improve the efficiency and reliability of their software development and delivery.

Future of DevOps

The future of DevOps is likely to involve continued growth and evolution as organizations increasingly adopt and rely on agile methodologies, cloud computing, and automation to improve the speed and reliability of their software development and delivery processes. Some key trends that are likely to shape the future of DevOps include:

• Continued adoption of agile and lean principles: As more organizations adopt agile and lean principles, DevOps practices will continue to evolve and become more deeply integrated into the software development process.
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning: These technologies are expected to play a larger role in the development and operation of software systems. They can be used to automate tasks, improve efficiency, and optimize the performance of applications.
• Containers and microservices: The use of containers and microservices is expected to become more widespread as organizations look to break down monolithic applications into smaller, more manageable units. This will require a shift towards a more decentralized architecture and the adoption of tools like Kubernetes.
• Increased use of automation: Automation will likely play an increasingly important role in the future of DevOps, with tools and technologies such as continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines and infrastructure as code (IaC) becoming increasingly prevalent.
• Greater emphasis on security: As organizations continue to rely on software to drive their businesses, the importance of security in the software development process will only continue to grow. DevOps practices will need to focus on integrating security into every stage of the development process.
• Growing importance of the cloud: The adoption of cloud computing will likely continue to accelerate, and DevOps practices will need to be adapted to take advantage of the unique capabilities of different cloud platforms.

Increased focus on collaboration and communication: As organizations adopt more agile and lean practices, there will be a greater emphasis on collaboration and communication between development and operations teams. DevOps practices will need to support and encourage this collaboration to be effective.

Few Frequently Asked Questions

General

1. What is DevOps?

   DevOps is a cultural and technical movement that aims to improve the collaboration and communication between software development and IT operations teams. It aims to automate the software delivery process and make it more agile, efficient, and reliable.

2. What are the key principles of DevOps?

   The key principles of DevOps include:

   • Automation: Automating repetitive tasks to reduce errors and improve efficiency
   • Collaboration: Encouraging collaboration between development and operations teams
   • Continuous delivery: Regularly releasing small updates to software rather than waiting for large, infrequent releases
   • Continuous integration: Integrating code changes frequently and automatically testing them
   • Monitoring: Continuous monitoring of the software to identify and fix issues quickly

3. What are some common DevOps tools?

   Some common DevOps tools include:

   • Git: A version control system for tracking changes to source code
   • Jenkins: An open-source automation server for building, testing, and deploying software
   • Docker: A containerization platform for packaging and deploying applications
   • Ansible: An open-source configuration management tool for automating infrastructure and application deployment
   • Terraform: An open-source infrastructure as code tool for building, changing, and managing infrastructure

4. How does DevOps improve software development?

   DevOps can improve software development by:

   • Reducing the time it takes to go from code commit to deployment
   • Increasing the reliability and stability of software by automating testing and deployment
   • Improving collaboration and communication between development and operations teams
   • Enabling faster and more frequent software releases

5. What are the challenges of implementing DevOps?

   Some challenges of implementing DevOps include:

   • Changing the culture and mindset of teams
   • Integrating and coordinating multiple tools and processes
   • Ensuring security and compliance
   • Managing the complexity of the software delivery process
   • Ensuring proper training and support for team members

Career in DevOps

1. Are beginners able to learn DevOps?

   The introduction of new technologies and tools on a daily basis can be challenging for a beginner. Although it may seem difficult, learning DevOps is certainly not impossible. We have compiled a list of resources for beginners to learn DevOps.

2. Is coding required for DevOps?

   To ensure that DevOps processes are automated, coding is required. In order to ensure high-quality code, they can use scripts or programming languages such as Python or Ruby.

3. DevOps: how do you get started?

   To begin a career in DevOps, it is important to determine what you are interested in. Depending on the company, DevOps has a variety of job titles. There are many different types of engineers, including product owners, development engineers, and even infrastructure engineers. After completing the application process, you will be able to find your first job in DevOps. This can be accomplished by networking and applying for positions on LinkedIn or Indeed. After finding your first job, you will soon find your second and third.

4. How will DevOps evolve in the future?

   Developers and operations teams will work more independently in the future to create better products through DevOps. In this session, we will explore the best ways in which these teams can work together to create better products in the most efficient manner possible. The concept of DevOps is changing from two teams working together to one team comprising two members. Currently, developers are responsible for more than just building products; they also have the responsibility of introducing new technologies and innovations into the development process.

5. Is DevOps likely to last for a long time?

   Although DevOps has been around for decades, it has only recently become popular among organizations. In the DevOps approach, process improvements are not the only goal. Changes in the organization are also included. In the future, DevOps will continue to be a popular methodology due to its ability to improve organizations' agility, speed, quality, and cost-effectiveness.

Conclusion

What does the future of DevOps hold for you? There is no doubt that DevOps has transformed and innovated IT for many years, though not everyone has taken advantage of it. There has never been a better time to be involved in DevOps, but if you want to make the most of this industry trend, then it is highly recommended that you begin exploring as soon as possible.

At Enhops, we work with clients to kickstart and scale their DevOps transformation journey. We start by extensive assessment and presents a deep-dive report about the expected outcomes. Our team of consultants guide you through the entire DevOps journey, implementation, tool chain standardization, and best practices. Write to us about your DevOps journey – info@enhops.com