DevOps Adoption And Implementation: From Application To Enterprise

DevOps has moved away from different fallacies and common misconceptions and is now acknowledged and highly valued by the industry. Due to increased automation and high-performance requirements for speedy delivery, DevOps is already an unavoidable initiative in the current IT landscape. 

For many years, tech conglomerates from around the world have experimented with and explored a variety of methodologies and techniques to include them in their ecosystems. While some have failed, several of them have successfully established a basis for DevOps deployment. But implementing DevOps is still difficult and slows down initiatives to fully benefit from the ecosystem.

DevOps for business, also known as enterprise DevOps, focuses on executing things on a larger scale in a way that encourages dependability and availability. Adoption and deployment of DevOps practices for large-scale firms is significantly difficult. They find it difficult to make the entire adoption transition from a single app to the enterprise level..

The most promising attempts ultimately fail to grow products and services along with the full range of adoption because tactics and difficulties differ at every stage. The bottom line is that you need a thorough strategy if you want to use DevOps to produce lasting commercial value.

In this article, we are exploring the strategies on how to implement DevOps and the challenges involved in the adoption and implementation of DevOps.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a term that was created in 2009 by Patrick Debois. It originates from operations and development.

DevOps is not a technology, framework, or tool. Instead, it is a set of processes that aid in bridging the gap between a company’s development and operations teams. DevOps bridges the gap, removing obstacles to communication and facilitating teamwork.

DevOps also increases the efficiency of a business software delivery ecosystem by facilitating quicker software delivery, improved collaboration, and automation.

Success in DevOps doesn’t come immediately, regardless of how you define it. Instead, it is a quest. Organizations today are concentrating on raising the level of information technology delivery. When implemented properly, DevOps is essential to reaching this objective.

[Also Read: How Can DevOps and Agile Work Together to Help Your Business Grow?]

7 Steps to Successful DevOps Adoption

Although the idea of DevOps is not new—it has been around for more than ten years—many firms have not yet put it into practice. And some organizations still have trouble using DevOps to get the results they want. Here are the steps that will help in the successful adoption of DevOps.

Adopt a DevOps mindset

Let’s implement DevOps. The process doesn’t just start by saying that. Everyone in your organization must be willing to change the way things are currently done and have a complete sense of what DevOps is and the specific business demands it may address. 

Organizations frequently mix up automation and DevOps. Even while automation helps speed up manual operations, cooperation and communication are the key objectives of DevOps. Automating your operations won’t bring about the desired business benefits unless everyone involved in the software development, delivery, testing, and operating processes adopts excellent communication and collaborative practices.

The best way to implement DevOps effectively is to make sure that everyone involved in the delivery cycle is more flexible and has an innovative mentality.

Everyone participating in the process should be aware of their duties and responsibilities and trained to cooperate for DevOps to become the organization’s culture. For DevOps to succeed, the organization’s leadership must have confidence in it and must assist in fostering a DevOps culture.

Recognize your infrastructure requirements

There is no “one size fits all” DevOps solution, despite what those who offer DevOps solutions will tell you. You can’t merely hire a self-described “DevOps engineer” or toss in an online tool and expect success.

Each organization’s DevOps software development journey will be distinct and based on its own business, culture, and infrastructure. The crucial next step is to have a deeper grasp of your application’s requirements. It enables you to make DevOps adoption business-driven and match infrastructure architecture with your organizational goals.

Evaluate your project delivery cycle and testing environments to find areas for improvement and possible bottlenecks.

Your DevOps adoption won’t be successful without integrating CI/CD for mobile apps pipelines into your workflow. Why? Because Continuous Delivery enables your development teams to deploy changes in production, and Continuous Integration helps them develop a product in small phases and identify and rectify faults instantly.

Create a DevOps strategy

Program managers must establish a shared objective to bring teams together in a collaborative setting. It instills a sense of responsibility and obligation in each team member. DevOps relies heavily on best practices that promote innovative approaches to software development, architecture, and testing while enhancing teamwork.

Your strategy should be focused on two objectives: helping the team as a whole do its work to the best of its ability and facilitating the continuous deployment of processes that are ready for production.

Choose the right DevOps tools

There isn’t a single tool that can handle all of the demands and key purposes of DevOps. The best course of action is to select a collection of tools that are ideal for the organization’s software delivery environment, applications, and teams.

The appropriate tools help organizations establish a solid DevOps framework, accomplish a continuous process from development to delivery, aid in resource and cost optimization, support seamless process execution, and ultimately fulfill organizational goals.

Organizations must take the following considerations into account when selecting the appropriate DevOps tools:

• The tools ought to be capable of enterprise-level automation. Without adding more effort, it will assist in scaling business workflows and continuously improving the operations.
• Integrating the entire delivery ecosystem is required in DevOps. Consequently, the tools you select should have integration capabilities.

Increase test automation and align QA with development

DevOps requires appropriate automated testing in order to achieve faster delivery. Not all testing types need to be automated. For instance, manual testing should still be done for investigative, security, and usability testing. Functional testing may only be partially automated, depending on the amount of writing effort required.

Development and testing are done simultaneously to prevent bugs after a release. The recommended approach is to run automated tests 1-2 times per day while the program is still being developed. If any issues are discovered, developers can concentrate on stabilizing the software before deploying the latest build.

Application containerization

Application containerization is a rapidly developing technology that is altering how cloud-based application instances are tested and run by developers. Your programs become lightweight and simple to execute when you containerize them.

As software is used, its reliability is increased by container packaging. Additionally, the software is independent of the broader infrastructure, thanks to its container components. This improves its ability to operate independently in any context. Furthermore, containerizing enables DevOps teams to quickly manage the application and make any adjustments required for a specific microservice.

Focus on iterative adoption

Avoid attempting to launch a comprehensive DevOps in the enterprise while just getting started. Choose a pilot application, put together a cross-functional DevOps team made up of developers, testers, and operations personnel, assess your value stream to discover bottlenecks and restrictions, and develop a preliminary deployment pipeline that takes a few of your processes constraints into account. 

Measure your success and growth, then repeat the process. Before starting to expand to additional projects, you must go through a few iterations to gain trust in the framework and the pilot.

Generally, since doing so would have the greatest commercial impact, you should start by addressing your largest value-stream restrictions. Some of these restrictions will be simple to overcome, while others will require a lot of time.

You may like reading: Measuring DevOps Success in the Enterprise with DORA Metrics

Challenges in Enterprise DevOps Implementation

In this competitive world, it becomes imperative for enterprises to adopt new technologies to stay relevant in the market. Along with benefits, the adoption of new technologies brings some challenges as well. It is best to stay prepared for these challenges. If managed strategically, these challenges might become new opportunities in the future. The following are the major challenges organizations face when seeking to adopt DevOps.

Overcoming the ‘Ops vs. Dev’ mindset

It is generally the first challenge that a company has when implementing DevOps principles. DevOps focuses on bringing teams together and dismantling silos inside IT organizations. Every organization should determine where development ends and operations begin, as well as how these two functions can be integrated effectively.

Microservices as an alternative to conventional infrastructure

Outdated apps may be modified or replaced with the help of the modern microservices framework, enabling quicker innovation and development. Businesses can handle heavier operational workloads using a microservice design.

Focusing too much on tools

Flashy new tools on the market may appear as a solution to every issue under the sun when considering the thrilling prospect of implementing DevOps.

But as new tools are introduced, you must teach your workers how to use them and ensure that the tools you choose adhere to security standards and are properly linked with the current infrastructure.

Team responsibility for releases and deploys

Teams do not fully own their software deployment and release cycles in organizations where DevOps principles are being deployed. 

The dev team should begin cooperating closely with any ops personnel and assume joint responsibility for deployments, releases, and operations to create a common context. It enables developers, for example, to understand what it takes for operations teams to deploy and release their work in production.

Handling resistance to change

Certain team members and important stakeholders may find the transition to DevOps frightening. Packaging it as an improvement over current development methods as opposed to a revolutionary change can help with that problem. Finding a small product or full-stack piece of existing software and converting it to DevOps practices is a solid strategy.

Teams will naturally want to embrace the new methods of working once they see the advantages in action.

How can Appinventiv Help in Implementing DevOps Principles to your Vision of Success?

While still ensuring that applications satisfy quality goals, DevOps implementation can dramatically speed up software releases. However, DevOps cannot be purchased, added on, or simply proclaimed. If you’re thinking about switching to a DevOps delivery model, AppInventiv can be your dependable partner.

By utilizing DevOps best practices and techniques, Appinventiv, a leading DevOps services provider, enables businesses to increase the agility and effectiveness of their development operations.

Modern tools and cutting-edge technologies are used by our DevOps engineers to complement our frameworks and integrate DevOps techniques into your company’s operations. We automate corporate operations and cloud infrastructure while ensuring continuous integration and delivery to accelerate the release of your product.

With the aid of a number of our cloud consulting services, including cloud infrastructure and cloud-managed services, we are assisting clients like IKEA and KFC to gain a competitive edge in their respective industries. In case you also need help for similar services, contact our experts today!

[Also Read: How does DevOps automation speed up the software development process?]

Wrapping Up!

Consider all the resources, organizational work, and new technology you’ll need for the DevOps implementation plan to be effective before deciding to deploy it. Delivering software more quickly without sacrificing quality will be the most obvious advantage of DevOps.

You must change both the process of software development and the IT infrastructure configuration to realize this benefit.

DevOps is a quest that is never finished since there is always room for improvement. However, if you never get going, your business objectives won’t be accomplished.

FAQs

Q. What are the primary reasons for implementing DevOps?

A. Two primary factors responsible for the adoption of DevOps are increased pressure on IT to produce more, quicker, better, continuously, and automatically, and results from their peers that unmistakably demonstrate success.

Q. What is the purpose of implementing DevOps?

A. At its most basic level, DevOps is a collection of Agile-supported methods to enhance communication and break down barriers between development and IT operations across an organization. By removing traditional silos, IT teams may create software much more quickly than with typical waterfall development models.

Q. When shouldn’t you implement DevOps?

A. Warning signs when DevOps may not be appropriate include:

• Regular releases are not necessary for your company.
• Your company is happy with the software as it is right now.
• You work in a heavily regulated sector.
• There will be a lot of M&A activity in your company.

Q. What areas do you use DevOps in?

A. The main goal of implementing DevOps is to create a culture where the development and operations teams can interact and operate in unison.

Q. What aspect of implementing DevOps in the company is the most difficult?

A. The different toolkits used by the development and operations teams present one of the major obstacles to DevOps implementation. The most important step in having things function properly is recognizing and synchronizing any differences between the two.

THE AUTHOR

Sudeep Srivastava

Co-Founder and Director