What is DevOps Methodology? A Complete Guide

This blog is for you if you want:

• A tool to automate manual tasks and help teams to manage complex environments.
• To speed up the development process and make it less prone to error.
• A shorter development cycle and want frequent code releases.

You need to use the DevOps method. Well, you would be thinking why, right?

DevOps is a software development methodology that improves the quality of solutions and enables better productivity and higher efficiency.

As a reputed software development services provider, we know the significance of DevpOps and how it helps resolve the above pointers. Let’s start understanding.

From this guide, you will learn

• What is DevOps methodology?
• What is the purpose of using DevOps in your business?
• What are the principles of DevOps methodology?
• How does DevOps work?

Let’s get started.

What is DevOps Methodology?

DevOps combines software product development with IT operations through the software development lifecycle, including development, testing, and support. This methodology helps improve the efficiency, speed, and security of the software development lifecycle and enhances the quality of delivery.

In this methodology, the development and operations teams collaborate for iterative development and faster feedback that improves the overall quality of the solution. The DevOps practices work on the agile software development methodology and focus on continuous delivery through lean practices and system theory for incremental development and continuous deployment. It is more of a change in the IT culture that can help improve business outcomes.

4 Purposes to Use DevOps Methodology for Your Business

Why do modern businesses need DevOps methodology? Let’s discuss what remains missing in the traditional development processes that are fulfilled by the DevOps model. Being a leading software development company, we have identified the core purposes to use DevOps in your business.

After the purpose, it is essential to look at the principles that define the success of this methodology.

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What are the Principles of DevOps Methodology?

There are certain tacit rules that control the DevOps model. With these DevOps principles, you can evaluate whether the approach will offer operational value or improve your business’s overall software development cycle. These principles can help place the systems and ensure incremental change within the teams.

1. Collaboration to Manage Development and Operation Team

   This is the foundation for DevOps methodologies. The traditionally siloed teams are replaced with more collaborative and information-sharing development and IT operations teams. The feedback is shared between the teams to help improve the developed software.

2. Automation to Reduce Human Error and Increase Productivity

   The DevOps engineer tries to automate a significant part of the custom software development for a shortened lifecycle and better deliveries. This automation is pivotal in achieving continuous deployment and testing throughout the entire process. As a result, you will find no errors or bugs in the system at the launch time.

3. Continuous Improvement for Optimising Speed, Cost, and Ease of Delivery

   Using quality assurance and automated testing while implementing continuous feedback, the DevOps teams strive to offer improved and highly usable products. The integration-testing-deployment is a continuous, collaborative, and automated cycle that helps DevOps teams deliver complex projects without errors and on time.

4. Customer-centric Actions for Further Improvements

   End users play a pivotal role in defining the DevOps methodology. You can create feedback loops with the end users to understand their concerns. You can use real-time monitoring and rapid application development to incorporate feedback and improve the product.

The Lean methodology also shares the same principles as DevOps. If you want to read more about Lean methodology then we have written a dedicated blog on Lean software development methodology.

Let’s take a quick look at how this methodology works and the core elements.

How Does DevOps Method Work?

Here are the points that state how DevOps methodology works.

1. In the DevOps methodology, the traditional silos are removed. The development and operations team will work like a single team.
2. The members of the various team form a single unit to ensure real-time visibility into the entire application lifecycle from development to testing and deployment
3. In some cases, the QA and security teams will also work together to provide better policies and workflows
4. The teams will define the integration channels, development, and operations tools and best software development practices that can help launch applications quickly into the market.

Since you have understood the working of DevOps methodology. Beside DevOps there are more popular software development methodologies you should know which helps in developing the software.

Now let’s even learn more about the lifecycle of DevOps.

The LifeCycle of DevOps Methodology

The DevOps culture comprises several automated workflows and development processes that help with iterative development. It follows the infinity loop of continuous approach that symbolizes collaborative and iterative development approaches. Every lifecycle stage plays a pivotal role in providing quality development.

1. Plan

   The first phase involves planning and coding the new project. In the planning part, the DevOps members- software developers, operations managers, clients, and testing team will collaborate to share the requirements.

   The coding aspect involves actual code development. You can use version control tools to build the project. You will also need to use source code management to develop the code and manage central repositories. The development team will be at the core of the coding phase. Several tools like Git, Subversion, and Maven might help with continuous development.

2. Build

   Once you have finished coding the software project, it is time to share it with the other teams. You need to test the product in testing and production environments to check if it is in sync with the end user’s requirement. The build stage will help the development team to commit the project to a shared system using tools like Gradel and Maven.

3. Continuous Integration and Delivery

   Unlike traditional methods, the DevOps system will induce continuous integration and testing. The development team will complete small builds and commit them to the central shared repository system. The testing team will use the latest automation tools to check for errors and bugs during this stage.

   The test-driven environment that pushes the code for continuous testing helps unveil the errors much before the release, thus reducing the development times.

   Whenever a new code-added feature is released, it is merged with the existing code to create continuation through integration processes.

4. Monitor and Alert

   Continuous monitoring helps identify the performance and speed of the application. During this phase, you get a better understanding of the functionality and use cases of the application. The errors regarding limited memory and the server not being reachable are resolved at this stage.

   This is where developers and operations teams can monitor the application in the production environment without going live to identify how the app would appear to the end user. Once the monitoring is done, it is time to go live with the application.

5. Operate

   This is the stage after you deploy the software to the live environment. During this stage, the operations teams manage the infrastructure configuration and provisioning, which plays a pivotal role in usability.

   The idea is to reduce the release length and make the whole approach iterative. As a result of release management, developers focus more on developing the project.

6. Continuous Feedback

   The end user plays a pivotal role in establishing DevOps success. It is important to know how they connected with the application and what made it usable. The users share their thoughts and comments as soon as the software is launched. This is sent to the software development team, who incorporate the same into the application.

Let’s check out how DevOps practices can help your business management software development efficiently.

What are the Benefits and Limitations of the DevOps Method?

Why should your business have a DevOps team for software development? Let’s discuss the top advantages of incorporating the DevOps approach into your organization

Which are the Best Practices to Follow in DevOps Methodology?

This guides how you can successfully implement DevOps methodology in your organization. This isn’t the complete list; it will help you identify more points and take the right steps in that direction. Let’s discuss the DevOps best practices in detail.

1. Active and Collaborative Efforts

   Open all channels for active communication and collaborative efforts between the teams. You need to break down the silos and incorporate a more friendly and transparent system to improve efficiency. The organization should have trust and empathy that can translate into better processes and incredible outcomes. You should include the compliance and security teams to help identify the best and most secure workflows and define policies.

2. Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery

   Automate the CI/CD pipeline for better outcomes. When you commit a small piece of code through continuous integration to the central code repository, you help developers collaborate with the testing teams efficiently.

   With this practice, you can remove errors from small code batches and detect bugs early. As a result, you simplify development and deployment, thus accelerating the launch.

3. Implement Automation Where Possible

   There are several manuals and redundant tasks within the software development cycle. You can automate most parts of this to enhance the speed of development and delivery. It will also save a lot of developer time, which can go into building the product.

   At the same time, with the right DevOps tools, you can reduce errors in coding and inaccuracies within the development that can lower the quality of the software project. It helps improve the performance of the teams.

4. Develop Incident Handling Process

   Incidents are the truth of every software development project. You will need to build a process around incident management to ensure you can learn from them. For this, the teams should focus on the issue, identify ways to remove it, and learn from the incident.

   As you progress, you should begin documenting the issues and creating a process that can help you identify such incidents easily. Make sure you have logged your reviews to better understand every incident aspect.

5. Self-service Infrastructure Model

   When implementing DevOps, cloud infrastructure should be a solid part of your project. It will help you collaborate from anywhere at any given time. You will also reduce infrastructure costs massively. At the same time, this model will remove the need for manual intervention in setting up and configuring the essential resources for software development and deployment.

   With self-service infrastructure, you will no longer need external intervention to find the right tools for development. You can use the cloud infra, find and use the tools to accelerate development.

On this note, let’s find some of the top tools that help improve the DevOps lifecycle.

Which are the Tools That Help in the DevOps Lifecycle?

Here are different tools you can use at the various stages of the development lifecycle.

Still have doubts about DevOps methodology? Let’s discuss the frequently asked questions.

Use DevOps Method to Faster Your Software Development

This guide took you through the basics of DevOps methodology, the purpose and the advantages of using it. You also saw the phases and best practices to implement this development process methodology.

If you want to implement the DevOps transformation within your organization for transformed, lean and iterative processes, you can connect with us. SpaceO is a leader in DevOps software development methodology.

To identify the ways to implement and determine the feasibility, connect with our team by filling out the form.