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What is DevOps?
Nine out of 10 leaders are hung up by slow operations — don't be one of them.
Nine out of 10 leaders are hung up by slow operations — don't be one of them.
Today, IT is about delivering personalized experiences fast, and without breaking the bank. So why do 91% of leaders find operational challenges a real buzzkill for innovation and team productivity?
Here’s the good news — modern DevOps best practices within a proper application lifecycle management (ALM) strategy provide your teams with the tools and know-how to quickly and securely launch new features and capabilities into the market.
So what is DevOps and how does it work?
DevOps is a combination of “development” (Dev) and “operations” (Ops), with the goal of speeding up the software development lifecycle through a set of automated tools and integration practices.
The DevOps process builds a collaborative culture between technology and people, providing reliable products, features, fixes, and updates at a rapid pace.
Agile is a common project management methodology that allows teams to respond to feedback and execute iterations in a timely and collaborative manner. DevOps extends Agile principles to the software development process, emphasizing a structure that breaks development into clear phases with a strong focus on continuous improvement.
When your organization adopts DevOps tools, you will experience increased collaboration between teams, more efficient feedback loops, and quicker updates. With a culture of continuous monitoring and improvement with DevOps, your team can better adapt to market changes and deliver more valuable customer experiences.
The unique aspect of a DevOps team is the team itself. The collective ownership – which includes the product manager, engineers, and business administrator – orchestrates the entire software development lifecycle, from development to deployment. This approach allows teams to develop a broader range of skills, enabling them to better address the challenges of a complex application lifecycle.
In particular, teams that utilize DevOps practices can automate and simplify processes to improve reliability and speed. DevOps serves as a key resource for tackling principles like continuous delivery, continuous integration, collaboration, and automation.
And when it comes to the application lifecycle, it’s important to recognize how DevOps and ALM work in tandem to ensure the success of a product.
Application lifecycle management (ALM) is the overall framework for building and handling changes to your applications, from design to final release. Think of it as your agile change management helper.
It helps you manage change requests, speed up development, and avoid costly mistakes in production. And source control lets you test commits from one central place so you can create your own functionality with precision.
ALM can be considered the “what” — in other words, testing your application. Meanwhile, DevOps is the “how” — automating that testing experience by merging code seamlessly.
Technology transformed every industry from banking to retail, and software is now more than a simple nice-to-have – it’s become a big part of how businesses operate.
From mobile applications to online services, software also plays an important role in increasing operational efficiencies throughout the value chain (such as logistics, communications, and operations).
A faster application development process means more efficiency for IT teams and improved capabilities for business users. It also means getting new products to market sooner. And with collaboration at the heart of DevOps, extended time spent on handoffs and crafting perfectly syncing code is of the past. As developers and operations teams work together, efficiency is inevitable.
Companies that embrace a DevOps culture see an average of 25% reduction in IT costs, a 30% increase in deployment rates, and a 28% increase in developer productivity.
Faster application development increases ROI by up to 285%, reduces time to market, and increases efficiency for IT teams. That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to DevOps benefits. When IT is fueled by DevOps, you can expect major improvements in:
And that’s only to name a few. A deeper understanding of the benefits of DevOps will allow you to visualize what improvements your organization may need and how you can transform it.
One of the most beneficial applications teams have experienced is the use of DevOps automation and infrastructure as code (IaC). It’s essential to handle your infrastructure and development processes at scale.
This means using automation to make it easy to tackle complex or ever-changing systems. Infrastructure as code is also a great example because it lets you manage development, testing, and production setups efficiently.
Automation, AI, and machine learning all allow for quicker and more reliable development, monitoring, and feedback. The efficiency and quality provided will only continue to grow as AI and machine learning evolve.
Embracing these DevOps best practices is the key to boosting efficiency, ramping up productivity, and saving costs.
Here are some key practices that can help your team thrive in a DevOps environment:
It’s also important to consider these DevOps principles to drive the foundation of success for teams: collaboration, empathy, continuous improvement, responsibility, and failure as a learning opportunity.
A handful of adjacent systems and methodologies either function directly within the DevOps framework or have distinct functions of their own. This can create confusion for some teams looking to implement DevOps. Let’s examine the key differences and collaborative aspects among them.
The main development phases of DevOps are:
FYI: This phase will also involve performing user-acceptance testing (UAT) to see if everything works how you want it to, especially in a production environment. This includes managing the infrastructure, monitoring system performance, and performing routine maintenance tasks. Automation is often employed during this phase to make sure everything is consistent and error-free.
Remember that even though DevOps phases are sequential in theory, they have ample room built in for adjustment within each stage, and are part of a continual process. Team members are assigned to each phase to execute tasks and carefully monitor success.
The development stage is just one piece of the DevOps integration puzzle. Building out an entire DevOps pipeline will require your organization to apply structural learning across all projects and organizational practices.
You can simplify this process with high-quality support from Salesforce by building your DevOps pipeline within DevOps Center.
When combined, DevOps and ALM capabilities make software easier to build, provide better experiences for your customers, and assist in launching new features and app experiences quickly and reliably.
Not only is it important to choose the right DevOps tools for your organization, but having access to expert direction will ensure you see as much success with them as possible from the start. Learn how to implement DevOps best practices and explore process templates in the Salesforce DevOps guide to get you started.
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