Principles of DevOps

As the world became more reliant on software and technology, there came a need for an improved way to ship quality products to users faster. The most widely adopted solution to this problem is the DevOps model. Many definitions of DevOps exist, and here is one of them:

DevOps (a portmanteau of “development” and “operations”) is an organizational philosophy that aims to bring people, processes, and tooling together in other to deliver reliable applications and services to production faster (Source: The DevOps Paradox podcast).

Note: To learn more about DevOps, click here.

DevOps principles

The DevOps model brings traditionally separated teams such as development and IT operations together, usually in a single team, to collaborate. In order to properly implement this model, there are guidelines that organizations must follow. These guidelines are the principles of DevOps.

DevOps is often mistakenly assumed to refer to the use of certain tools and technologies in the development process. Oftentimes, organizations will have tools such as Jenkins, Travis CI, etc., in their technology stack and assume they have DevOps in place. This is completely false.

DevOps principles are essential for successfully implementing the DevOps model. The DevOps principles are as follows:

• Collaboration and communication

• Agile software development

• Infrastructure as code

• Continuous deployment

• Automation

• System Integration

• Continual improvement process

• Continuous delivery

• Feedback

Collaboration and communication

The essential part of DevOps is the integration of the formerly separate development and operations teams. Collaboration and effective communication are essential to ensure the newly integrated team can function efficiently. There is a need for strong information-sharing practices and proper feedback across the team to ensure that the required inputs and outputs are being delivered to whoever needs them to get their job done in a timely fashion.

Agile software development

Agile is a methodology that involves an iterative and incremental approach to a software developmental cycle. It usually entails breaking down organizational goals into milestones and then achieving them within specific time frames, known as sprints. Agile emphasizes continuous communication and speed while maintaining flexibility to allow the teams to adapt to changes if needed. It is important to realize that Agile is a methodology that doesn’t specify any details; it is up to the organization to map the details, such as the size of the teams and the length of the sprints, etc.

Note: To learn more about Agile, click here.

Infrastructure as code (IaC)

Infrastructure as code (IaC) is the process of managing and provisioning the application infrastructure using written code scripts rather than manually configuring them physically. IaC is a critical aspect of DevOps because it allows the team to quickly provision infrastructure and scale it as required to maintain a reliable production application experience for the users. Much of the infrastructure required—from the development phase to the production phase—can be accomplished using IaC, thus enabling Agile methods and easier collaboration between teams.

Note: To learn more about infrastructure as code (IaC), click here.

Continuous deployment

Continuous deployment is a strategy in which software code changes are frequently deployed to production using automated deployment systems. This strategy allows the teams to deliver code changes to production as soon as they are ready. The quality of the code changes is ensured by using automated systems to test the code before it is added to production for user consumption.

Note: To learn more about continuous deployment, click here.

Automation

Automation refers to all the technologies and processes that enable organizations to carry out specific activities with little to no human input. Automation fits in with DevOps teams because it allows them to automate mundane, repetitive tasks that are essential to the smooth operation of the production application. For instance, build processes can easily be automated by writing scripts that run whenever a new code change is detected. Infrastructure provisioning, scaling, and monitoring can also be automated to limit human participation and ensure optimal uptimes.

System Integration

System integration is the process of aggregating component sub-systems to obtain one final system that will provide the required functionality. In DevOps, we have discussed how this model unites several separate teams. These teams have their own individual systems, which must now be integrated in some manner and provide a seamless environment for development and operations to continue to function as they would if they were in their separate teams.

Continuous improvement process

This principle ensures that there is a continuous evolution of the application or service that the consumer experiences. This evolution could appear in “incremental and frequent” or “seldom and breakthrough” updates to production. The intention is to continue to make efforts to improve the user experience of the final consumer.

Continuous delivery

Continuous delivery allows the frequent release of applications in short time spans as soon as the code changes are ready and have undergone quality testing using an automated process. This delivery pipeline ensures that only reliable changes reach the final consumer while allowing for the flexibility of delivering those changes as soon as they are implemented in the codebase.

Note: To learn more about continuous delivery, click here.

Feedback

Constant feedback is a strong requirement that allows the process and people involved in the software development cycle to understand where changes need to be made and the best method to apply to implement those changes. This continuous loop-back of input from the outputs of the process ensures that the new changes result in an overall improvement of the application. Without this crucial final piece, changes to the application would be unorganized.

Conclusion

We have covered all the principles of DevOps and how they enable organizations to understand the processes and practices that are required for the successful implementation of the model. It is important to note that the specifics of how these principles will be applied may differ from one organization to the other. These are merely generalized guidelines to be used to achieve the goal of utilizing the DevOps model. For instance, a large organization will implement a very different form of DevOps compared to a medium-sized or smaller company. Still, they all aim to reap the same benefits from the model.