According to the Second Annual GitLab Global Developer Survey, “Thirty-five percent of respondents say they have a somewhat established DevOps culture and only 23 percent go so far as to describe their development method as DevOps.” The survey further adds, “65 percent of respondents believe the DevOps workflow saves them time during the development process and 29 percent plan to invest in DevOps for 2018.”
The worldwide survey indicates a steady increase in DevOps adoption by enterprises from varied sectors and regions. As a set of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools, DevOps aims to accelerate the delivery of high-quality products and services by unifying software development (Dev) and software operations (Ops). Unlike conventional software development and infrastructure management methodology, DevOps emphasizes on a unification of software development, testing, and deployment activities.
The unification of software development, testing, and deployment activities enable enterprises to improve and evolve software products rapidly and efficiently. Also, the unification leads to the delivery of high-quality software products by eliminating common QA and Ops roadblocks. However, the enterprises can further reap a number of benefits by switching from conventional software development and infrastructure management processes to DevOps.
6 Reasons Why More and More Enterprises will Adopt DevOps in 2018
- Extend Agile Methodology
Many enterprises adopt an agile methodology to accelerate software delivery and improve software quality. The agile methodology requires enterprises to unify software development and testing activities. DevOps extend agile methodology by integrating software development, testing, and deployment activities. The unification helps enterprises to speed up software delivery by removing development, testing, and deployment bottlenecks. At the same time, the enterprises can further leverage DevOps to implement agile values to deployment, performance monitoring, and environment configuration.
2. Facilitate Communication & Promote Collaboration
DevOps further emphasizes on making programmers, testers, and operation engineers work as a single team. Hence, each member of the team understands the predefined business requirements and expected project goals clearly. The understanding makes the professionals work together to achieve a common goal. They even focus on the common goal instead of individual goals and achievements. The collaboration further makes it easier for programmers, testers, and operation engineers to experiment, innovate, and research.
3. Automate Repetitive Tasks
While switching from conventional software development methodology to DevOps, enterprises have to adopt automation tools and virtual production platforms. The cloud-based platforms and deployment tools help operations engineers to deploy the software applications without putting extra time and effort. At the same time, the testing professionals can use test automation tools to evaluate the software under varied user conditions and produce more accurate test results. The automation of common and routine tasks helps businesses to reduce development cycles and shorten delivery cycles.
4. Reduce Failures and Fixes
A number of studies suggest that enterprises can get all bugs and performance issues in a software application fixed quickly by testing it early and continuously. The early detection of defects even helps enterprises to reduce both testing time and cost. DevOps emphasizes on shorter development cycles and frequent code releases. As the programmers focus on a specific feature or component of the software application, they can easily write high-quality code and repair common coding errors. At the same time, the testers can further detect the flaws in the software and get them repaired without any delay. Hence, enterprises can reduce failures and fixes significantly by adopting DevOps.
5. Speed Up Failure Recovery
Often businesses fail to prevent software failure despite creating robust IT infrastructures. But the enterprises can keep the customer experience intact by repairing the software or hardware issues as early as possible. DevOps helps businesses to accelerate failure recovery by reducing the time required by professionals to fix the software or hardware issues. As the developers, testers, and operations engineers work as a single time, they can troubleshoot and fix the issues quickly and keep the software functional.
6. Build a Performance-Based Work Environment
Often professionals find it difficult to deliver modern software applications in conventional work environments designed based on rules and powers. DevOps enables enterprises to modernize and transform the work environment by focusing only on performance. The unified work environment will make various stakeholders in the project collaborate with each other without bureaucratic obstacles. Also, the software developers and operations engineers can perform optimally by understanding their role and sharing risk.
On the whole, DevOps helps enterprises to improve and involve software products rapidly. But it is always important for enterprises to identify the key phases of DevOps maturity — waterfall development, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous delivery. Likewise, the organizations must adopt widely used DevOps tools like source code repository, build server, configuration management, virtual infrastructure, and test automation. Hence, each enterprise needs to customize DevOps adoption by integrating the appropriate DevOps processes and tools.
