Not Another Fad: DevOps

What is DevOps?

DevOps is the fusion of practices, tools, and philosophies that allow an organization to deliver applications and services at an efficient rate. DevOps is meant to improve the software development lifecycle. The Dev in DevOps comprises Plan, Build, Code, and Test phases. While the Ops part is made up of Release, Deploy, Operate, and Monitor phases:

• Plan: In this phase, we take time to plan tasks and schedules while thinking about how we can continuously integrate and deploy our products.
• Code: In this phase, we develop, review, and merge code.
• Build: This is where we start integrating or code we have built into an environment for testing.
• Test: Speaking of testing, this is where we integrate our continuous testing.
• Release: This is where we approve releases and do any change management that needs to be done.
• Deploy: Your product is officially deployed and out in the wild.
• Operate: Here, we set up feedback loops to collect data on the utilization and performance of our application.
• Monitor: Finally, we monitor performance and end-user experiences as a starting point for our Planning.

But Why DevOps?

Some key things that make DevOps so powerful are the speed, automation, and continuous integration/deployment of products. This can make for faster, quality deliveries while freeing up more time to innovate new products and ideas. It also allows for continuous feedback from users, product owners, developers, and anyone with a stake in the product. This is key to making a product that stands out from the rest and leaves a lasting impression on those involved.

Who Uses DevOps?

One of the biggest proponents of the use of DevOps is Amazon. They are such big advocates for the methodology that you can find countless documentation, resources, and blogs on their AWS site.

Amazon began using DevOps around 2010 when they moved from physical servers to the AWS cloud. This allowed them to scale up in capacity when needed while saving resources. This move allowed the company to deploy to production about once every 11 seconds (mind-blowing). Even though they frequently deploy, they emphasize quality assurance and testing, allowing them to mitigate risks during this rapid development.