DevOps Is Here To Stay
So what is DevOps? Well, “DevOps is the combination of practices and tools designed to increase an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services faster than traditional software development processes.” — Synopsys
That’s a dense statement. Let’s break it down to create a better picture of what it all means..
DevOps literally means development and IT operations. It’s a methodology that is meant to create a cohesive unit between teams. Both development and operation teams work closely together throughout the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC) creating shared responsibility to reach a common goal.
To further understand the DevOps lifecycle, we need to understand where the potential for this has come from. Meet the Waterfall methodology. This is one of the most widely used and traditional SDLC’s in the IT field.
In a nutshell waterfall relies on workflow to be done in a linear fashion. This means that to move forward the previous phase must be completed first.
The downside of this life cycle is:
- It leaves little interaction and responsibility between teams and users.
- This workflow naturally restricts the ability to refactor any previously implemented work.
- Long release cycles due to the linear fashion.
So how does the DevOps lifecycle differ?
DevOps teams have equal responsibility when it comes to an end product, there is a common goal to deliver the best result because everyone plays an important role and shares responsibility with combined workflows. The speed at which DevOps teams can deliver a result is done by collaboration and feedback.
Collaboration opens a line of communication which is key. The development process is enhanced because teams can encourage each other to continuously improve on the delivery during all stages of the development life cycle.
Given the rapid pace of the DevOps lifecycle, feedback turnaround time is accelerated creating a continuous improvement for the end product and reliability through rapid updates to an infrastructure as needed.
Who uses DevOps?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a very popular cloud service provider. Back in 2010 Amazon moved from physical servers to the cloud giving them the benefit to scale capacity incrementally and deploy new servers wherever and whenever. Amazon uses DevOps to increase the frequency of deployment through implementing a new load balancer that increases the reliability of every deployment with minimal outages saving Amazon millions and drastically increasing reliability.
