App Dev Manager Candice Lai share insights on the road to DevOps transformation.

DevOps is quickly becoming the future of managing software development projects among companies, from start-ups to large enterprise development shops.

DevOps uses Agile principles and combines infrastructure, development, QA, and operations engineers together through the entire cycle of software development, deployment, and support, eliminating many of the silos between teams. Most importantly, DevOps improves communication and enables better collaboration, helping enterprises bring products and innovation to market much more rapidly.

Start with Small Projects and Teams

Starting with small DevOps projects and teams allows you to work out any kinks within the organization or processes before scaling up. This maximizes the chances of success and creates an achievable model and environment for the rest of the organization to adopt. Also, a right-sized DevOps team enables agile and flexible adaptation to change that often transfers when projects are increased in size.

Choose the Right Projects and the Right Teams

If you have a new project, this will be a good opportunity to start using a DevOps approach as there are no preceding development protocols to follow and old baggage to carry forward. Most importantly, having the team’s buy-in is crucial. If engineers are not keen on new processes, DevOps adoption will likely fail or, at a minimum, take a long time to implement. Even if you don’t have a new project, try to start using DevOps in a small milestone or development cycle. For example, introduce DevOps in a sprint as a step to gradual adoption within the team.

Choose the Right Tools for Collaboration and Communication

The foundation of a successful DevOps process includes good communication, collaboration, and tools to help reduce overhead and improve efficiency. Using a complete Application Life Cycle Management tool (for example, Azure DevOps) will provide a centralized environment for the development of backlogs, stories creation, and code repositories in addition to– sprint planning, development, deployment, and operation monitoring. DevOps process provide agility, allowing for the scaling up and down of development resources as needed– a critical need in today’s development environment. Currently, various private and public clouds provide flexibility for DevOps teams with resources in the form of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, eliminating the need to manage their own infrastructure and so they can focus on core business needs.

Customer and Process Streamline Focus

To thrive today in a competitive marketplace, rapidly delivering new features and products to customers allows you to stay ahead of your competitors. The old model of rolling out new code after lengthy sprints or months of development makes it difficult to stay ahead. Customers demand continuously improved products with fast delivery. This can be successfully executed with a well-streamlined DevOps organization. Operation automation reduces operation redundancies, thus reducing the number of meetings needed to address pressing issues.

In Summary

Adopting the tools and mindset of DevOps in the right manner will facilitate development efficiency, increase productivity, and increase the rate at which products can be brought to market.