8 Best Practices of IT Services for Boosting DevOps Working Environment
DevOps has been conquering the software development industry for many years. As soon as the idea of development, QA, and operations teams working together turned into a highly efficient practice, many businesses started looking for ways to improve DevOps working environment.
How can you boost DevOps performance?
DevOps Working Environment and its Importance
The most important benefits of DevOps is continuous software development, quick implementation and delivery, and routine task automation. All of the above allows the development company to cut software development time, free up human resources, and keep the risk of errors to the very minimum.
However, in order to make the above a reality, it’s important to give the teams a solid understanding of the task. They should also have a good idea of the IT infrastructure, processes, and operations of the company the software is developed for.
With some trial and error, the majority of companies realized that the ideal results can’t be achieved by simply picking Ops, development, and QA specialists and throwing them into one mix. The only way for DevOps to work is to build passionate teams from scratch.
All team members should have the same goal in mind while being able to ensure excellent flexibility in their actions. Only when the entire team is fully responsible for the whole product and each aspect of the development procedure, the DevOps can function properly.
Organizing DevOps is just a small part of the process. Making sure you boost the working environment continuously is the key to success. Let’s talk about a few ways IT companies boost their DevOps working environment.
1. Discussing Bottleneck Prevention
No matter how amazing the communication is within a team coupled with high-quality expertise, DevOps is bound to encounter bottlenecks during the implementation process. These roadblocks can appear due to human errors, inadequate understanding of the process, and many more reasons.
DevOps team should be able to discuss bottlenecks in advance and develop a scheme to follow when they occur. This requires breaking the communication barrier and taking a bold approach to decision making.
Each DevOps team should monitor the workflow continuously and be ready to react to the problem as a team without sectioning the responsibilities.
2. Reaching Business Objective
Even though the process of development has changed due to DevOps team implementation, it doesn’t mean that the overall goals have changed as well.
The right understanding of the business objective can help the team work consistently. The overall vision of the goal helps with prioritizing.
Business objective information needs to be communicated to all team members in order to ensure full understanding of the final goal
3. Using Containers
You don’t have to use containers for DevOps, but they can make the process of development much easier and more efficient. Containers are an easy solution for making the DevOps environment consistent. They help create continuous updates, give support for multiple frameworks, and also provide many other benefits.
Using containers helps the DevOps team budget its resources and avoid wasting time and effort.
4. Taking Advantage of Automation
Automated integration can improve the efficiency of the DevOps teamwork. The company can develop recurring scripts and workflows for their repeating processes. The team members get a chance to seek strategic initiatives.
When the team members don’t have to focus on manual repetitive tasks, they can use their resources to improve the development process. Automating integration tests can streamline the build process.
5. Auditing the Business
One of the most important parts of boosting your DevOps environment is doing the right auditing in advance. You need to help the team determine the existing challenges faced by the company, evaluate the infrastructure that currently exists, and figure out how mature the software delivery lifecycle is.
6. Planning the Work Process
Preliminary plans for software development can help improve the environment for the DevOps team before the actual work starts. The experts have to create a set of planned actions that can solve the challenges faced by the company, select the tools and processes appropriate for the task at hand, and come up with an estimate of timeframes.
Another important matter that must be discussed and evaluated in advance is the approximate cost of software development. Keeping this information in mind can help improve the process.
7. Working According to Plan
Once the plan is ready, the team can go on to designing and adopting an agile environment for the software delivery cycle.
One of the most important parts of the agile methodology is transparency. It doesn't just help boost the DevOps working environment but simplifies operational visibility and monitoring.
8. Using Metrics
The efficiency measurements using metrics is also vital to the smooth working process. The DevOps team must have a clear understanding of what requires its special attention during the project.
In order to identify such areas, they should monitor DevOps metrics. Such metrics as current load, uptime, and performance can be crucial to figuring out what weak points the team is facing and adjusting the work to deal with them efficiently.
Metrics must be available to both DevOps team members and the clients.
Final Thoughts
DevOps environment is a delicate substance, which needs assistance not just from the team members but also from company leaders and clients. Improving such a working environment can help achieve excellent software development results as well as cut time and costs of the process.