“We have DevOps” – that’s what brands say to engage customers. But what do they exactly mean by that? And is their understanding of DevOps correct? In this article, we’ll explain the meaning and the nature of DevOps. And you’ll clear out how it can help your business develop.
From this article you will learn:
“What is DevOps?”
DevOps (the merger of the words “Development” and “Operations”) is a phenomenon that emphasizes the importance of communication and collaboration between software developers and production IT professionals, as well as automating the deployment of software and infrastructure changes.
The purpose of DevOps is to create a working collaborative environment in which the creation, testing, and deployment of software can happen quickly, often and reliably. In turn, this allows the organization to more quickly achieve its business goals by the faster deployment of the new features, security recovery and bug fixes. The ultimate goal of DevOps is to make the deploy process so routine that it has ceased to be a notable event.
DevOps includes the popular concepts of flexible development, continuous integration, and delivery. This ideology extends to the social aspect of IT aiming to destroy the boundaries dividing the development, operations, support, and management teams.
At the same time, DevOps has a descriptive nature, not prescriptive. DevOps is not a recipe for troubleshooting the management problems, its purpose is to expand cooperation.
Why is DevOps so important?
In simple words, DevOps accelerates the entire software lifecycle, from fixing the code to production deployment.
DevOps with reliable software for deploying is vital for high-performance IT departments. Their recovery time is 24 times less, and they have 3 times fewer system failures compared to non-DevOps companies. Companies with DevOps spend 50% less time to resolve security problems and 22% less time for unplanned work. DevOps means speed and quality to the company and its clients.
The positive environment with fewer failures and more time free of fixing bugs will increase the satisfaction of work by the IT specialists.
How to implement DevOps?
Since DevOps is inherently a cultural and procedural adaptation of established processes, it is impossible to implement DevOps in one night. The actions necessary to implement DevOps really depend on the existing IT infrastructure and the corporate structure of the organization: brands already using the cloud infrastructure and flexible development methods are several steps ahead of those who do not use these systems.
Although the long-term switch to DevOps might take up to 2 years for organizations familiar to it, the results of the pilot implementation can be seen in a few weeks even for an immature firm.
How we do DevOps. The Cases.
Case 1 “The First Step”
When the project is developing rapidly, there can be several people working on it simultaneously: administrators, developers, customer service, technical support. Constant code changes occur in the project: modules installations, theme customizations, functionality modifications, integrations, and etc. In this whirlwind of code changes, it’s vital to monitor them and organize the teamwork. Because if the developers are not synchronized they start messing up each other’s code.
We provide the solution to solve the miscommunication problem between the developers. The simplest DevOps tool that will help to avoid this situation is Git. Git is a code version tracking system. it has already become an industry standard since 2005 when it was launched.
Linked to the project, Git tracks any changes, intersections, and conflicts in the code. This increases the safety and stability of the project.
Implementing the Git into the development procedure of the company is the first and the simplest step to DevOps. Arranged properly it will immediately start saving money by reducing the development expenses, the number of conflicts and by decreasing the overall downtime.
We know how to set up Git quickly and integrate it into your development process without slowing it down. Ask us how.
Case 2 “Too much code”
Large projects need lots of development. We have customers with 30 or more modules installed and integrated. Owners constantly improve modify them after getting feedback from their customers and conducting research. It takes much time to make changes to 30 modules and then test those changes. Several developers working on the same project are likely to interfere with each other. As a result, each change requires manual operations to transfer the code, update the modules, change the structure of the database, and transform the data.
This can increase the risk of breakdowns and delay the implementation of the change. For business, time is very important. You need to add a feature make it work right now. For business one moment can cost too much.
We help our clients to integrate DevOp to minimize or exclude the deployment errors by configuring the system of automatic releases:
- Git for tracking changes in code and code migration
- Migrations for tracking changes in the database and changing the database
- Automatic acceptance tests, to automate verification after changes
- CI system for automatic start and traceability of results
As a result, developers do not need to transfer changes manually. The developer executes the development on the test version, and the changes are transferred to production automatically. This automation saves time and effort for the developers and managers while reducing the risk of errors and downtime.
If you constantly deal with massive code changes and it slows down your business growth – we will optimize and automate the deployment process and will show you how to manage it efficiently.
Case 3 “Big Project”
Large, complex projects, with high attendance, require even more attention. Downtime or errors will be too expensive to allow them to happen. In the case of “heavy” projects we execute the following workflow:
- Development store – here the developer writes new functionality, checks it and fixes bugs. The development stores use test data. After testing, the developer transfers the changes to the client test server (staging).
- Staging store is a copy of the customer’s live store. This is a place where developers deploy modified or new functions and modules after development store. Testers, the client or his managers check the functionality. if the results of the check meet customer’s expectations and demands, they are transferred to the live store.
- Live store – (or Production) the customer’s store which is online right now. Developers can’t do anything on production store, often they don’t even have an access to it. Only final tested versions of functionality get here.
Imagine how problematic and risky it would be to transfer all data from one stage to another manually. And what a trouble it could be for the developer to roll back. One tiny bug can be tested for several weeks and the developer would need to remember it. The manual transfer would also include giving access to Production store to several developers, which is very insecure.
DevOps solves it easily. It allows automating the release procedure, saves time and emotions. On the top, the store stays in absolute safety.
Do you need to organize the convenient procedure to quickly test the functionality prior the deployment in the safe surrounding which reflects the live status of your store? We will arrange the 3-step workflow, configure the stages, set up the automation between them and will share our 10+ year experience in the DevOps.
Get your DevOps set up with us!
Contact us to:
- Audit your system
- Plan the switch to DevOps
- Implement DevOps
