What is DevOps?
DevOps is an approach that aims to unify the development, marketing, IT, quality assurance, and security teams. This allows companies to develop a product across several angles simultaneously, significantly increasing the production speed. The merging or close cooperation of the teams typically means expanding the employees’ skill stacks for better communication.
The benefits of DevOps
The main benefits of DevOps include the following:
- Development speed. Bringing the operations, programming, and design teams together allows the company to release software and updates faster. DevOps also helps adapt to market changes more rapidly, test and implement innovations, and improve the overall efficiency of development.
- Testing and reliability. Continuous integration and delivery is a practice that enables the company to automate the testing and stay informed about how well the software and each released update are performing. Consequently, you can deliver bug fixes and respond to your users’ feedback faster.
- Cross-department collaboration. Improved internal processes are also one of the largest DevOps benefits for companies. When teams work together, they share more responsibilities, as well as problem-solving resources. For instance, working with the marketing team empowers the developers with the knowledge of how the final product will be promoted and hence reduces the time when one team remains idle while another one is occupied.
- Security. DevOps enables you to boost security by enforcing compliance policies with automatic monitoring throughout the whole development cycle. Using policy as code, where the configuration of the infrastructure is programmed dynamically, your company can ensure security even when you begin scaling your project.
DevOps model and practices
The DevOps methodology relies on cyclical development. Once the code is written, it is sent for automated testing while the development team can work on a different project. In case the first stage of testing is successful, the build is sent to the quality assurance team. If an issue arises at any moment, the original developers get notified of it immediately, making it possible to fix problems quickly and efficiently.
Typical practices in the DevOps model:
- collaboration methods like Agile,
- continuous integration,
- continuous delivery,
- continuous development,
- policy as code and infrastructure as code,
- microservices, and
- logging of events.
The most critical DevOps tools include automation, management, and version control software like Git, Docker, and Kubernetes.
Who is a DevOps engineer: role and responsibilities
A DevOps engineer is a person who builds the infrastructure necessary for software release and acts as an intermediary between the developers and other departments. An employee in this position must present solid communication as well as development skills, leadership capabilities, strong focus, and excellent knowledge of Agile principles.
Typical DevOps engineer responsibilities:
- developing and integrating new infrastructures and tools;
- taking part in project management, creating project plans, and monitoring their execution;
- testing their and others’ code, uncovering issues, and developing fixes;
- working with the programming department closely, monitoring performance;
- ensuring the safety and stability of the systems;
- communicating the needs of other teams and stakeholders to the developers; and
- improving and automating the established operations.