What is DevOps in layman’s terms?
Much unlike what most of you must think this fancy tech term means. DevOps isn’t a piece is software or an application. It’s a system of work if you’ll call it that. DevOps, simply put, is a collection of practices and tools that helps streamline and deliver applications/services faster than traditional methods. DevOps is a modern tool that removes outdated aspects of the workflow, such as barriers between different teams of an organization working on the same project. DevOps implements a model breaking those inherent barriers and brings all development teams together from development, testing, and even software life cycle.
What DevOps brings to the table?
- It helps in adapting to the market and competing with the competition.
- It helps reduce the time it takes to get your software to the market.
- It does not limit the speed at which you accelerate the development, lets you keep innovating at whatever pace you feel right.
- It significantly improves collaboration, lets teams reduce inefficiencies, and save time by allowing them to share responsibilities and combine workflows.
- The best part about all this is that you don’t have to sacrifice Security if you use DevOps by using its built-in automated security testing tools.
Things that make up the DevOps workflow
- Planning the next stage of the product
- Building the product
- Testing the product in real-time by deploying it in a condition similar to what it will have to work in
- Keep maintaining the product or keep it up to date through regular deliveries of product updates
- Monitoring how the product performs and logging any errors or its results.
- Collection Consumer Feedback and incorporating any discoveries in the product if deemed necessary.
DevOps implementation happens in 3 Stages
Stage 1: Automated Testing
Stage 2: Constant Intergration
Stage 3: Constant Delivery
Automated Testing
This is brilliantly done in the DevOps workflow by writing tests within the code themselves. So any change made to the code can be cross-checked by whether or not the test failed.
Constant Integration
Once we have some code for testing, the testing is automated. Many servers are run in the background continuously and made to replicate every situation. To see if we found any bugs in its use.
Continuous Delivery
This process is divided into 5 continuous stages:
- Development
- Building
- Testing
- Deployment
- Release
- Back to number 1 and any other steps if required
The process is never-ending. It is a loop. First, the idea is worked on, then built. Then it goes through testing, post which it is deployed to see how it responds to its tasks. Once all of the above are achieved to a satisfactory level the software is finally released.
Benefits of using DevOps
- It ramps up the speed to market or delivery time.
- It helps automate many things that can be automated, saving time and letting a business divert that focus to many of the other things that have to be worked upon.
- It makes the entire process of development or brainstorming to market a lot more efficient.
- The whole process gives out a higher product quality than would be found otherwise due to its system of constant checks.
- Because of the Stage 2: Constant Integration processes as mentioned above, fewer bugs are found later in the product cycle, as this process of Constant Integration is a very thorough one.
- Due to the special ability of DevOps to be able to streamline the whole process so efficiently. The process of delivering requires a lot less time than would be required otherwise.
Conclusion
In all DevOps is an amazing concept brought to life at least for the companies and overall provides a much better experience for the consumer than would be found otherwise.
-Aditya Drolia