What is DevOps?
Key Practices and Benefits

DevOps definition

DevOps is a mindset and set of practices meant to effectively integrate development and operations into a cohesive whole in the modern product development life cycle. DevOps breaks down the divide between creating a product and maintaining it to allow for higher-paced service and application delivery. It empowers teams to proactively problem-solve with a “you build it, you run it” approach.

Though many DevOps principles were created with cloud-based software development in mind, its unique approach to fostering better communication and breaking down silos can help many different kinds of businesses. No matter what industry your business is in, it almost certainly relies on software and applications to deliver value to clients and meet its goals. Ensuring that your software development is efficient and keeps up with demand is more important than ever.

In this article, we will focus on DevOps as it relates specifically to software development.

Key practices of DevOps

In DevOps, production occurs in self-sufficient cells focused on one entire project rather than in siloed phases. It doesn’t require handoffs between teams, reducing bottlenecks and roadblocks. In addition, developers can implement feedback from operations team members faster, resulting in quick code improvements and problem-solving.

It’s helpful to think of DevOps as an interrelated set of philosophies and frameworks:

Practice	Description
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)	Infrastructure as code involves managing and provisioning computing infrastructure through machine-readable definition files. This practice enables automation, consistency, and scalability in infrastructure management.
Collaboration and Communication	Collaboration and communication in DevOps emphasize fostering effective teamwork and sharing knowledge among development, operations, and other stakeholders. Tools and practices in this area include version control systems, issue tracking, chat platforms, and collaborative documentation.
Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)	Continuous integration involves automating the process of integrating code changes into a shared repository, allowing for early detection of integration issues. Continuous delivery extends continuous integration by automating the deployment process to ensure that code changes are ready for production release at any time, with minimal manual intervention.
Shift Left Security	Shift left security is a practice that involves integrating security measures and testing earlier in the software development life cycle (SDLC), typically during the development phase. By addressing security concerns earlier, teams can identify and remediate vulnerabilities more effectively and efficiently, reducing security risks and the costs associated with fixing issues later in the SDLC.
Monitoring and Logging	Monitoring involves tracking the performance, availability, and behavior of systems and applications in real time, and logging involves recording events and activities for analysis and troubleshooting. These practices are crucial for detecting and diagnosing issues, optimizing performance, and ensuring the reliability and availability of systems and applications. Tools and practices in this area include monitoring tools, log management systems, and alerting mechanisms.

Major benefits of DevOps

Many businesses have already seen the benefits of DevOps firsthand. Incorporating DevOps practices into your business can improve company culture by breaking down silos and fostering interdepartmental communication, but it does much more. In addition to reaping the benefits of improved collaboration, your organization can operate with improved speed and functionality both in terms of software development and in the operation of your business.

Some of the most common benefits of DevOps include:

1. Speed: The DevOps model allows your developers and operations team to deliver solutions more frequently and with much better quality. It allows for faster innovation and adaptation to ever-evolving markets, driving more efficient business results.
2. Rapid Deployment: DevOps teams have the ability to release updates and fix bugs frequently. This provides organizations with the competitive advantage of promptly responding to customer requests and needs.
3. Improved Collaboration: One of the foundations of DevOps is a culture of collaboration, especially among software developers and operations teams. This collaboration allows for a more efficient process that saves time and money.
4. Reliability: Implementing CI/CD pipeline processes can help ensure all changes to code infrastructure and application updates are safe and functional.
5. Scale: DevOps practices, such as infrastructure as code, allow the team to manage processes and scale through automation. Process automation and consistency help DevOps teams manage a growing, complex infrastructure in a reliable way and with reduced risk.
6. Security: You can incorporate security measures and best practices into the DevOps process for an added layer of cybersecurity. Active security audits, testing, and policies are often integrated into DevOps workflows.

Common challenges of DevOps

DevOps requires a fundamental shift in several business areas, and this adjustment may require some loss of productivity up front. Some of the most common challenges associated with DevOps include:

1. Extended infrastructural changes: Switching to the DevOps model often requires changes to your system’s infrastructure to support new workflows, a time-consuming and resource-draining process.
2. Team resistance: The DevOps culture of trust and collaboration takes time and effort to adopt, especially if teams were previously siloed. This challenge is even more difficult to overcome if any teams have a history of conflict. It may also require employees to change the way they work, so it’s natural to face some resistance.
3. Too much emphasis on new tools: When implementing DevOps methodology, it’s easy to become captivated by all the DevOps tools available on the market. The right tool can solve plenty of problems, but with each new DevOps tool comes new training and security requirements that can make the transition more confusing. Additionally, integrating tools with your infrastructure takes time and resources.
4. Difficulty hiring dedicated DevOps engineers: As powerful as DevOps may be, it is still relatively new, which makes it harder to find engineers who are well versed in it. You might instead need to focus on training your existing team in DevOps philosophies so that they can then train newcomers.

Helpful DevOps tools and services

Many DevOps tools and services exist to help teams at each stage of the process. Here are some of the most common and how they fit in:

Tool	Description
Jenkins	Open-source automation server for CI/CD pipelines.
Docker	Containerization platform for packaging applications and dependencies into containers for deployment.
Kubernetes	Container orchestration platform for automating deployment, scaling, and application management.
Ansible	Configuration management and automation tool for provisioning, application deployment, and orchestration.
Chef	Configuration management tool for infrastructure automation and application deployment.
Puppet	Configuration management tool for automating provisioning, configuration, and management of infrastructure.
GitLab	Web-based Git repository manager and DevOps life cycle tool providing CI/CD pipelines and collaboration features.
GitHub	Web-based hosting service for version control using Git, with features for collaboration and code review.
Prometheus	Open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for reliability and scalability, used for monitoring containerized applications and microservices architectures.
Grafana	Open-source analytics and monitoring solution for visualizing time-series data from various sources, including Prometheus.
Terraform	Open-source IaC tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently.
DuploCloud	DevOps automation platform for provisioning secure and compliant infrastructures.

DevOps best practices

1. Dedicate an InfoSec Leader Within the DevOps Team: Given the rapid pace of development in a CI/CD pipeline, it’s important to ensure that security doesn’t fall through the cracks. It’s essential to assign the role of InfoSec Leader to one engineer within the DevOps team so that someone is always looking out for compliance.
2. Upskill the IT Team: Moving to DevOps is a great opportunity to upskill your IT team, especially given the difficulty of hiring qualified DevOps engineers. Focusing on building up core competencies and cross-disciplinary skills among your engineers will pay dividends and help ensure the team can retain focus on — and ownership of — the SDLC.
3. Automate Recurring Security Processes and Tasks: In DevOps, automation is your friend. Automate everything you can, especially security processes and tasks, to ensure that there are no bottlenecks. Automation makes life easier for developers and can significantly speed up the development process. Automating security will help ensure it is not left behind in the rush to fill the CI/CD pipeline.
4. Emphasize Culture Shift: Keeping in mind that the entire point of DevOps is to improve collaboration between production, operations, and quality assurance teams, the key is to focus on the culture shift toward open communication. It won’t happen overnight, but the benefits are indisputable. In DevOps, everyone must take ownership of the SDLC, regardless of specific job descriptions. Teams must learn to work together to achieve common goals and deliver on customer expectations.
5. Deliver Continuous Feedback: Continuous feedback helps ensure your engineers have all the information they need to do their jobs. This means disseminating test reports, code reviews, and any information about pipeline failures as quickly as possible. You can help foster a culture of collaboration by encouraging continuous feedback to and from all team members. Remember, in DevOps, everyone owns the pipeline.

Best DevOps learning resources

Software development professionals looking to learn more about DevOps can dive into some of the following books and resources:

Title	Author(s)	Description
The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win	Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford	A fictional story that explores the challenges of IT management and the principles of DevOps through the experiences of a struggling company and its journey toward improvement and success.
The DevOps Handbook, Second Edition: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, & Security in Technology Organizations	Gene Kim, Patrick Debois, John Willis, Jez Humble	A comprehensive guide to implementing DevOps practices, covering principles, methodologies, and case studies to help organizations achieve agility, reliability, and security in their technology operations.
Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation	Jez Humble, David Farley	This book introduces the concepts and practices of continuous delivery, emphasizing automation, testing, and deployment techniques to enable reliable and frequent software releases.
Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations	Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim	Based on research findings, this book explores the factors that contribute to high-performing technology organizations — including DevOps practices — and provides actionable insights for building and scaling such organizations.
DevOps for Dummies	Emily Freeman	A beginner-friendly guide to DevOps principles and practices, offering explanations, examples, and practical tips for individuals and organizations looking to adopt DevOps.
Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems	Niall Richard Murphy, Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff	Written by Google engineers, this book introduces the principles and practices of site reliability engineering (SRE), focusing on ensuring the reliability, scalability, and maintainability of large-scale production systems.
Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems	Sam Newman	This book discusses the design, implementation, and deployment of microservices architecture, exploring principles, patterns, and best practices for building scalable and maintainable systems composed of fine-grained services.

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