Implementing DevOps in your software project. Key practices
Every company that bases part or all of its business model on a software solution has to focus on improving delivery times. If your organization is in the same boat and you are looking to improve the way your software development and operations teams work together to get faster delivery times, more stable systems and improved software quality adopting DevOps is the best way to go about doing this.
Whether you are new to the concept of DevOps or looking to enhance your existing processes, this blog post will walk you through the key phases, tools, and methodologies to successfully implement DevOps for your software development project.
What is DevOps?
There are plenty of articles and definitions out there so we don’t want to spend too much time on something that you can easily find through a quick Google search. But it helps to have a starting point.
In short, DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops). Its objective is to shorten the systems development life cycle while delivering features, fixes, and updates frequently in close alignment with business objectives. The core idea behind DevOps is to break down the traditional barriers between development teams and operations teams, allowing for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) of software.
Now that we got the definition out of the way let’s look at the key phases of implementing DevOps in your organization.
Become familiar with the DevOps mindset
Before we look at the tools and processes that DevOps requires, it’s essential to first understand and adopt the DevOps mindset. The first mistake that many companies and departments make is implementing the tools and processes but forgetting about the corporate culture that also needs to change.
DevOps is more than just a set of practices. It’s a culture shift that focuses on collaboration, automation, and continuous improvement between development (Dev) and operations (Ops).
DevOps represents a significant change in the way software is developed so you must view it from a change management point of view as well. You need to foster a collaborative environment by encouraging open communication between development, testing, and operations teams. Regular cross-team meetings (involving developers, testers, and operations), shared goals and metrics, cross-team pairing, or continuous feedback loops are just some of the ways you can begin to encourage a DevOps mindset.
Automate your development workflow
Automation is at the core of DevOps. By automating repetitive tasks, you reduce the risk of human error and speed up the software delivery process. Below are a couple of key areas we recommend you focus on for automation:
- Build automation: Tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, or Gradle can be used to automate code compilation and packaging
- Testing automation: Implement automated testing tools like Selenium, Katalon, or JUnit to run unit, integration, and end-to-end tests
- Deployment automation: Use tools such as Docker and Kubernetes to automate the deployment of your applications across various environments
The tools above are just examples of the various software solutions you can use for automation. Each one has its benefits and challenges so it’s important to talk about this with your in-house experts or, if you decide to go this route, with your software development supplier in order to choose the ones that are ideally suited for you.
Another piece of advice about automation is to start with automating small, high-value tasks and then progressively expand as you gain more experience with the process. Automating everything from the beginning can be overwhelming or it can negatively impact your product. Worst case this can also reduce the appetite for adopting DevOps among your company’s management.
Set up a CI/CD pipeline
A Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline is essential for enabling quick and reliable software releases. CI ensures that new code is regularly integrated into the main branch, tested, and verified, while CD automates the release process. Here are some ideas on how you can set up a CI/CD pipeline:
- Version control: Start by setting up a version control system like Git. Ensure that all code changes are committed to a central repository
- Continuous integration: Use CI tools such as Jenkins or CircleCI to automate the process of integrating new code into the main branch. You should also configure your pipeline to automatically trigger tests whenever code is pushed
- Continuous delivery/deployment: Implement CD tools like Spinnaker or AWS CodePipeline to automatically deploy your application to production or staging environments after successful integration
Just like the tools included previously in our automation section, the examples above are just some of the solutions available on the market. Make sure you talk about the best ones for you with your team.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Managing infrastructure manually can generate inconsistencies and inefficiencies. For example, when multiple team members make manual changes to a server’s configuration without proper coordination, you can end up with different environments that behave unpredictably.
With IaC, you can automate tasks like provisioning, scaling, and resource management, making everything more predictable and efficient. Tools like Terraform, Ansible, and AWS CloudFormation are widely used in this space.
To make the most of IaC, it’s important to version control your infrastructure configurations. This not only helps you keep track of changes but also allows you to revert if something breaks. For instance, if a recent configuration update causes performance issues, you can quickly roll back to a previous version. Also, using cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, which are well-suited for IaC, makes automation and scaling much smoother.
Monitor and improve
Now that we are done with the mindset and tools let’s look at the ongoing process of improvement required by DevOps. After you’ve set up your pipeline and processes, you then need to monitor and log system performance not only to detect issues early but also to continuously improve your workflow. Below are some ideas of software solutions you can use for monitoring and logging tasks.
- Monitoring tools: Application and infrastructure performance can be monitored through tools like Prometheus, Grafana, or New Relic
- Logging: Implement centralized logging tools like ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) or Splunk to collect and analyze logs from various parts of your system
Work together with your team to set up alerts for critical issues, such as downtime or performance degradation, and make sure to regularly review your pipeline for bottlenecks and optimize processes based on feedback and performance data.
Promote continuous learning and experimentation
And we end our blog post with another mindset step. For your DevOps efforts to flourish, you need to promote continuous learning and improvement to keep up with the evolving nature of software development.
Implement cross-training or knowledge-sharing sessions, where your developers can learn more about software testing and testers can understand operations better. This reduces misunderstandings and creates empathy among your teams.
Last but not least, hold meetings where you analyze failures and learn from them without assigning blame and keep an open mind about trying out new DevOps tools and frameworks to stay ahead of the curve.
Start your DevOps journey with us
Implementing DevOps is a transformative journey that, when done right, can significantly enhance your software development and operations. But it can seem daunting at first.
One way to make the process less stressful is to work with external software development providers like QTeam Software Solutions.
You don’t need to spend time researching and learning to work with DevOps tools and processes – we already have the expertise to do that allowing you to focus on growing your business. Just look at the feedback that some of our customers have about us.