Increasing the ability to deliver digital products at high velocity!
DevOps services are the result of applying the agile paradigm to the entire digital product lifecycle – from conception to test, deployment and support. Development and operations engineers are no longer siloed but involved in all steps of the process, generalizing the automation efforts that previously were only seen during the programming phases and using a technology stack that helps to create and evolve applications quickly, reliably and autonomously.
All this increases delivery capacity and accelerates time to market: organizations are able to launch and improve products at a faster pace; rapidly adapt to market changes; provide a better service to their customers; compete more effectively in the market; and efficiently address the demands popping up every day.
Simply put, DevOps services are a true cultural shift, showing how software development and IT consulting can work together toward more rewarding outcomes for all.
DevOps Services: Innovating at the speed of the business
Having an idea in the morning and making sure customers are using that new feature in the afternoon…is that real? Well, if we are talking about DevOps services, then the answer can be “Yes”!
DevOps lies on the premise that highly collaborative teams can reduce development time, increase software quality, and improve the process of ongoing changes and upgrades. And, by the end of the day, it makes all the difference to the clients and to the business itself.
But how to get there? Damon Edwards and John Willis, the pioneers of DevOps came up with the CAMS model to showcase the key values, which was later expanded to CALMS by Jez Humble. It stands for:
Culture – a DevOps culture seeks to push decision-making responsibility as close to the edge (Autonomy) as opposed to centralizing all decision-making (Command & Control).
Automation – the everything-as-code mindset is at the heart of DevOps, regardless of the tooling you might use, leaving more time for high value-add work. Automation also improves repeatability and reliability – the same task is performed the same way every time.
Lean – it seeks to achieve Flow – the smooth transition of work from one “center” to the next, in the minimum time. Ideally with as few queues/buffers as possible.
Measurement – without it, you can never learn or improve. The annual State of DevOps report focuses on 4 key measures – Lead time (how long does it take from Code Commit to Production Deployment?), Change Frequency (how frequently are you deploying to production?), Change Failure Rate (how often does a change introduce a bug into production?), MTTR – Mean Time to Repair (how long does it take you to restore service in the case of an incident?)
Sharing – sharing is caring and needs to be encouraged and rewarded. It’s a focus on breaking down barriers between departments and sharing knowledge.
To ensure time to market is improved with DevOps services, it’s really important to have clear and transparent communication, commit to common goals and purpose, align processes and workflows, take global accountability, have the tools and know-how needed to succeed (never stop learning and investigating new techs and trends!).
What about DevOps services’ best practices? What about DevOps services’ best practices? How to work the right way to achieve the expected results? Besides what we mentioned above, here is an overview, according to AWS:
Continuous Integration – Software development practice where developers regularly merge their code changes into a central repository, after which automated builds and tests are run. The key goals are to find and address bugs quicker, improve software quality, and reduce the time it takes to validate and release new software updates.
Continuous Delivery – Software development practice where code changes are automatically built, tested, and prepared for a release to production. It expands upon continuous integration by deploying all code changes to a testing environment and/or a production environment after the build stage.
Microservices – Design approach to build a single application as a set of small services. Each service runs in its own process and communicates with other services through a well-defined interface using typically an HTTP-based application programming interface (API). Microservices are built around business capabilities; each service is scoped to a single purpose.
Infrastructure as Code – Practice in which infrastructure is provisioned and managed using code and software development techniques. The cloud’s API-driven model enables developers and system administrators to interact with infrastructure programmatically, and at scale, instead of needing to manually set up and configure resources.
Monitoring and Logging – By capturing, categorizing, and analyzing data and logs generated by applications and infrastructure, organizations understand how changes or updates impact users, shedding insights into the root causes of problems or unexpected changes.
Now… Are you ready to take advantage of the power of DevOps services? InnoTech has the experience and multi-disciplinary talents to be the right partner! Let’s talk about your specific challenges and start working side by side based on this agile approach to accelerate innovation in your company.
