What is DevOps: principles, culture, perspectives for students

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December 28, 2021 Programming

Those who are superficially or marginally familiar with application development in the IT-sphere may not know what DevOps is. That said, however, the terms “Agile”, “agile approach” are likely familiar. DevOps is, in fact, the transfer of Agile principles from the stage of software development only to a wider scope, when the release of the finished working product is the responsibility of everyone involved: from the coder to the technical support service.

In other words, DevOps principles allow communication and interaction between different software development, support, and testing systems. To better understand this complex topic, understand the perspectives of this approach, and find out where one can learn the basics of DevOps, read our material. By the way, if you’re still studying and want to become a DevOps, you can use help with dissertation and focus on those things that are more important for you.

What is DevOps

In case of problems with the application operation the technical support team often blames the developers. But in the end, it is the end-users who have to suffer, and they do not care whose fault it is exactly. To combine the efforts of development and support departments, to create a common area of responsibility, a new area – DevOps – was invented.

Main principles of DevOps culture

Experts from programming assignment help explain what DevOps is in simple words. First of all, it is necessary to organize a special culture between the employees within the company. And for this, you need to fundamentally change the way people work and interact. DevOps culture implemented in a company contributes to the formation of a highly productive team.

Collaborative, transparent, and aligned activities

DevOps culture, among other things, is based on collaboration between different departments. First and foremost, there is transparency in the exchange of information between functionally different teams of performers. Departments share current work priorities and emerging issues with each other. The planning of business goals must be agreed upon and discussed together.

Specific allocation of responsibilities

By coordinating activities with each other, company departments partially participate in other, not main for them, stages of software life-cycle, and also bear additional responsibility for their work. For example, developers are responsible not only for the development phase itself but also for the problems that arise as a result of changes made during the operation phase. And support specialists at the same stage provide process management, security, and regulatory compliance.

Reducing release cycles

Staff work must be flexible enough to release software in short release cycles. This simplifies planning and improves risk management. In addition, staggered work has less impact on the stability of the entire system and enables the company to adjust to changing customer needs and effectively counteract the influence of competitors.

Continuous learning

The high performance of the DevOps team makes it possible to focus on improving the professional competence of employees. By applying new knowledge to processes, errors can be eliminated as early as possible. Continuous self-learning also helps to adapt to the changing market, introduce new technologies into production at a faster pace, and meet customer needs more easily. There is always room for growth in DevOps.

Application lifecycle in DevOps practices

DevOps practices influence every stage of the entire software product lifecycle. Although these stages are dependent on each other, the activities of the implementers do not affect them in any way. If a company fully embraces a DevOps culture, the role of each employee is engaged throughout the entire application lifecycle, from planning to operation.

Stage 1: Planning

The first phase is dedicated to envisioning, defining, and describing the functionality of the software being created. The DevOps team follows the progress of work at all levels of detail. The specialists control the tasks for a specific product as well as for an entire series of software.

Work at the planning stage must be flexible and transparent. Different tools help engineers with this: open task logs, bug tracking services, dashboards for workflow visualization, SCRUM methodology for managing development flexibility.

Stage 2: Application development

This is where the actual programming, testing, and integration of the created code takes place, including embedding it into build artifacts for later deployment to different environments. DevOps specialists are interested in the rapid implementation of innovations, in which the quality, performance, and stability of the product will not suffer.

To this end, routine tasks are automated, tools with high efficiency are used, and automated testing is introduced to run iterations in small increments.

Stage 3: Delivery

Delivery here refers to a set of sequential activities for the reliable deployment of the created software in the working environments. It also includes creating a fully controlled infrastructure and setting it up in these environments.

The task of DevOps teams is to define the process of release management with a clear indication of the stages that need to be approved manually. In addition, experts set up automated gateways that allow software products to move from stage to stage and eventually be available to end-users. With automation, scalability, repeatability, and control of these processes are achieved. Simply put, DevOps specialists help companies deploy the product and deliver it to customers with ease and confidence.

Stage 4: Operation

This phase includes processes for maintaining, monitoring, and troubleshooting errors that occur while using the product. With the implementation of DevOps techniques, system reliability and increased availability are ensured, downtime is minimized, operational safety is improved, and management is improved.

To do this, it is important to identify problems before they can degrade the quality of service, and when identified, to promptly fix them. DevOps specialists here actively use telemetry tools, alerting systems, and services that provide full software transparency.