DevOps….But Why ?
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) methodology for the process of planning, creating, testing, and deploying software. The name, DevOps, is a combination of two teams, the Development and Operations teams.
The idea is to have Development and Operations work closely together through each stage of the DevOps lifecycle and create a pipeline for continuous deployment and integration (CI/CD).
The three pillars of DevOps are its culture, best practices, and tools.
The DevOps culture is all about automation, communication, accountability, shared responsibility, and increased collaboration. Everyone working together is KEY.
DevOps’ best practices include agile project management, CI/CD, automation, monitoring, and continuous feedback.
Below is an example of some of the kinds of tools used at each stage of the DevOps lifecycle:
Some of the benefits of DevOps are as such:
- Faster delivery time: Speed is everything. Teams that practice DevOps release deliverables more frequently, with higher quality and stability.
- Security: DevSecOps is an active, integrated part of the development process. Security is built into the product by integrating active security audits and security testing into agile development and DevOps workflows.
- Early defect detection: The collaborative DevOps environment fosters a culture of knowledge sharing across the teams. The automated, continuous monitoring and continuous testing of the code help improve the overall build quality. Teams are empowered to share their feedback with each other so that the defects are detected early as well as resolved early.
- Feedback loop: Customer and internal feedback are available at every process stage. Due to this, teams can adapt quicker to updated business and customer needs.
These are just a few of the benefits of DevOps. You can learn more here.
Use Case: Capital One
Founded in 1988, Capital One considers itself a start-up in the banking community, even after all these years! Right from the start, they have been committed to running the bank more like a tech company than a typical financial institution and I can attest to it as I worked there for over 3 years.
From 2012 to 2020, Capital One underwent the following changes:
- Adoption of agile practices
- Building automated test cases
- Automating deployments and tests
- Migration to the public cloud
In 2020, Capital One became the first U.S. bank to announce the movement of its legacy on-premises data centers to the public cloud.
George Brady, Capital One’s executive Vice-President, has said “We realized about a decade ago that, to continue to be a great bank, we needed to reinvent ourselves as a digital technology company”.
They switched to a DevOps model in 2010 having previously used the traditional Waterfall Model. Their goal is to be as responsive to customer feedback as possible all while maintaining a healthy developer culture.
By using AWS, we’ve cut the time needed to build new application infrastructure by more than 99 percent. With the virtually instantaneous infrastructure available on AWS, our DevOps teams have the building blocks they need to start developing any new product as soon as they understand the intent behind it.
John Andrukonis
Chief Architect, Capital One
Capital One has been a disrupter in the financial services industry since 1994, using technology to transform banking and payments. Today, the “digital bank” is all in on AWS, embracing data analytics, microservices, AI/ML, and other solutions to continue to innovate.
Thanks for spending some time on this blog of mine, I hope it was a bit helpful and just like the past two weeks, I’ll be publishing a new blog next week and it’s going to be about DSA so definitely don’t miss it !
