Everyone has a different definition of DevOps. But what does it mean?
DevOps is an amalgamation of two teams i.e., development (Dev) & operations (Ops). It is an approach that helps speed up the development process and enables better maintenance of deployments. It automates the processes, streamlines the pipelines by unifying the teams, and improves efficiency in an organization.
However, DevOps is not just about automation & pipelines. It helps in developing an agile work culture within the organization, which later leads to continuous value creation.
A business manager usually spends their day focusing on multiple operations. Whether it is employee experience, sales data, customer satisfaction, managing product range, or even delivery process – a business manager has to keep a close eye on everything. However, what about digital services? What about the development, quality, speed, and scalability of digital services on different devices?
The IT department or marketing department alone cannot take the responsibility. To keep up with the ever-changing buying behavior of customers, organizations need to develop robust digital services, especially when the product itself is digitally available.
Here’s what DevOps helps business managers with – it enables quality improvements as well as fast value delivery.
- DevOps automates the IT service functions that are related to software development, testing, and maintenance.
- DevOps automates the processes that are linked between the development environment & the production environment.
Automating these processes helps the business manager reduce the organization’s operational costs as the cost of the re-loops of multiple activities is reduced. In addition to this, automation adds greater transparency to the processes which, in turn, increases customer satisfaction.
Let us discuss the major benefits of DevOps for business managers –
Enhances Transparency & Predictability
As a business manager, wouldn’t it be great to predict how you can create more value for your customers as well as the business? With DevOps, you can do that. It enhances predictability in both aspects – technical & non-technical. How? Well, it verifies new features automatically, makes the installations error-free, and logs the activities.
With improving predictability, DevOps also works on better transparency over the organization’s future development activities. It enables maintenance of backlogs as well as prioritizes and records the development activities which further helps in predicting the project’s future while also enabling retrospectives.
The development process can be divided into parts and every task of the team members participating in the development activities can be made clear. Secondly, the teams work according to the agreed methodology to achieve their tasks. This categorization leads to better decision-making because they give the oversight of how the development process is going and what the team is doing.
Motivates the Teams
Since the tasks are divided and there is transparency among the teams on how the project is coming along, the issues are handled better. That is, if the development starts heading in the wrong direction, the business owner or the manager has the freedom to quickly change the direction of development.
The sprint log motivates the development team as random issues occur less using this approach. Teams have time to focus and work on critical tasks while also preparing for the tasks that need to be implemented immediately.
Moreover, when the team members know what they have to do, they work more efficiently. This reduces operational costs, maximizes customer value, and improves business results.
Change of Culture
One of the main issues that organizations face during the transformation is the management of business processes. And the biggest advantage that DevOps provides is optimization. It optimizes the whole system, making the organization more adaptive, data-driven, and aligned with customers as well as business needs.
The sprint system in management clarifies the minds of business managers, lets them know what the business needs, along with the benefits of a structured work environment. DevOps organizations achieve more stability in terms of software development and deployment.
Business managers can determine the needs of an organization as a whole and ensure that they are met. They can also work to ensure the availability of the organization’s products and services to the customers.
Additionally, it saves a lot of money as the concepts and ideas are validated at an early stage & only the valued features get brought up to the development log. And the low-cost development ideas are developed that are relevant to the end user’s needs.
Agile Development
DevOps brings a variety of tools & practices to the table. This includes test automation, release pipe optimization, deployment monitoring, etc. However, all these development activities need to be constantly optimized according to the changing requirements. The best approach to handle this would be a “technical sprint” that focuses on the tool fixes and technical improvements. ‘Maintenance’ task has to be added in this sprint so that the team is prepared if any interruptions occur.
DevOps enables agile development in organizations. It helps the businesses achieve continuous value creation as the time is not wasted on manual work or tooling.
Final Words
The Cloud Services market is growing rapidly, and with that, so is the demand and importance of DevOps. Understanding what DevOps is, how it is implemented, and why it is essential for organizations is an important step towards adopting its practices going forward.
Learn DevOps & Deliver Value
Enroll in Cognixia’s DevOps Training and upgrade your skillset. Take a step towards shaping your career & future for the better. Get a hands-on, live, interactive, instructor-led DevOps certification course. In this competitive world, Cognixia is here to provide you with a highly intuitive online learning experience, help you enhance your knowledge with engaging training sessions, and add great value to your skillset. Cognixia caters to both the individual learners as well as the corporate workforce via our online interactive instructor-led courses.
This DevOps course will cover all the key concepts, methodologies & tools. It starts with a foundational introduction to DevOps, further covering the concepts of virtualization, its benefits & the many virtualization products that play an important role in both learnings as well as implementing the DevOps culture. Learners will also learn about DevOps tools including Vagrant, Version Control Systems, Docker, Containerization, and Configuration Management with Chef, SaltStack, Puppet, and Ansible.
Get certified in DevOps and familiarize yourself with open-source monitoring application Nagios, its plug-ins, alongside its use as a GUI. The CI/CD Pipeline Automation will further cover the Advanced DevOps concepts that are covered in detail along with Docker container clustering using Docker Swarm & Kubernetes.
Our online DevOps training will cover the following concepts –
- Introduction to DevOps
- GIT: Version Control
- Maven
- Docker – Containers
- Puppet for configuration management
- Ansible
- Nagios: Monitoring
- Jenkins – Continuous Integration
- Docker Container Clustering using Docker Swarm
- Docker Container Clustering using Kubernetes
- Advanced DevOps (CI/CD Pipeline Automation)