The Five Pillars of Successful DevOps Strategy

The Five Pillars of Successful DevOps Strategy

DevOps is a set of practices aimed at making software development simpler, faster, and more efficient.

It does this by emphasizing collaboration between developers and operations. It's important to understand its implications, and how to use it properly.

In order to succeed with a DevOps strategy, it is necessary to focus on five elements of the process. Each of them is equally important and requires a lot of effort, work, and attention.

Change

Effective and up-to-date teams are the foundation of any organization. With DevOps, a culture of constant cooperation and understanding must be developed and encouraged. Everyone knows that changes are a challenging but inevitable process. They must happen sooner or later in order for the organization to increase its work efficiency and adapt to new conditions.

That process can go easier if the people involved are motivated to do it. That can be done by:

• Creating clear and common goals;
• Making detailed plans;
• Promoting mutual trust;
• Understanding and eliminating blame.

Automation

Automation is an indispensable part of a DevOps system. It implies performing tasks with reduced human assistance which are crucial for continuous integration, testing, and deployment. The ultimate goal of automation is faster application development.

A good rule of thumb is if it can be automated - it should be automated. Manual tasks must be at a minimum. This makes deliveries more frequent, and thus employees do other more specific tasks. With automation, the possibility of human error is also avoided, which can otherwise happen very often.

With all its advantages, it makes achieving business goals much easier.

Lean

Lean is the extension of Lean Principles applied in an IT environment. This methodology can be of great benefit to DevOps and deliver greater value to end users by removing waste. There are seven types of waste: Overproduction, overprocessing, inventory, motion, waiting, transportation and defects.

With Lean you will:

• Eliminate work that does not add value;
• Involve all employees in the process;
• Improve continuously;
• Increase customers value;
• Effectively focus on goals.

KPIs

Any successful DevOps strategy must measure performance and various relevant metrics. Selecting and monitoring the most important metrics, or KPIs will help your company make important decisions. They are also used to monitor daily progress towards the ultimate goals.

Some of the metrics that will help your business include:

• MTTR (mean time to recovery);
• Change failure rate;
• Lead time;
• Defect escape rate;
• Customer tickets.

KPIs vary from project to project and they depend on the needs of the company. To define them, list the goals you want to achieve, and then decide which metric is best for tracking performance towards those goals.

Tracking relevant metrics does not mean that you won't encounter any issues. However, when you do encounter them, they're easier to handle and overcome.

Communication

Good and clear communication has always been important for success. This is also true for modern businesses. Planning, exchanging ideas, and sharing experiences lead to better cooperation and progress.

Exchange of opinions and feedback can help understand the same thing from a completely different point of view. This can avoid unwanted difficulties and help in reaching new solutions.

Tasks should always be clear to everyone. That is why it is always necessary to set aside a certain amount of time for planning and elaborating the upcoming process in detail.

The more clarity your teams have, the simpler the process will be.

Conclusion

In conclusion, all the mentioned aspects are very important for the smooth operation and continuous progress of the organization. This ensures ultimate success and minimizes errors. Focusing on each of these five pillars will make your DevOps strategy work.

If you want to know more about DevOps in general or you need help:

• visit our devops service page;
• give us a call at +385 1 3141 562;
• contact our sales department at sales@sedmiodjel.com.

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