The Continuous DevOps Pipeline and Loop
How to Continuously Improve Your Web Projects
Length: 7 Minutes
In , DevOps are commonly thought of by many in the industry as a multitude of things. Typically, DevOps encompasses elements that are part philosophical, practice, and industry tools. Together these three components help organizations deliver web applications and online services to customers that are both consistent and agile in their ability to quickly adapt to an ever changing technical landscape.
From a philosophical standpoint, DevOps shares many commonalities with Total Quality Management (TQM) Systems that was originally designed for manufacturing processes. It also shares traits of Six Sigma, which aims to reduce waste and eliminate defects in a processes. This topic is very deep, but in short the main goal is to create the most efficient and effective processes by using systematic and measurable approaches.
The philosophical parts of DevOps is actually one of the key components of any DevOps project. This is because all practices and tools that are used in a DevOps cycle all stem from it's philosophy. For example, identifying bottlenecks in staging, quality assurance, or in rapidly deploying web projects are just a few areas that DevOps seeks to improve.
Of course, there is much more to DevOps than the philosophical parts. Beyond the "why", is the the "how". In a DevOps system, the development and operational teams do not work in "silos", but are instead joined to work together throughout the full web project lifecycle. This is important because it combines a range of skills and experience together to provide the best and most well-thought out solutions.
The impact that technology, the internet, and software has had on the world has undeniably forever changed the landscape of business. This has become evermore clear throughout the 20th century. Our world has become more and more integrated with the web, from buying a pair of shoes online, to purchasing groceries, to paying for utilities, banking, and much more. As of , it is clear to see that technology has become more than a supporting role for business, and for some it is the backbone to every part of their business.
In the 21st Century, every company is a tech company. Whether they know it yet, or not.
Even the most in-person businesses rely on some elements of technology to conduct business, if they are to be competitive in the world today. Use a cell phone for business? Then you're business uses technology. Have a Point of Sales terminal to accept Credit Cards? Then you're business uses technology. We could go on, but we know by now you get the point. Practically everybody uses technology for business, which is why it is so important to have the most optimal processes to further your business and make it most competitive.
Speed, efficiency, and effectiveness have become the core focus for many businesses dealing with physical products and inventory for a long time. The same is true however for your web applications, virtual services, and software. DevOps can help you supercharge your business, be the most effective and efficient, and deliver the most consistent online experiences. The Market Action Research team can help your business in determining what exactly your business will need to improve or implement a DevOps model in your business. Contact us today for your free consultation.
DevOps
Plan - Do - Review
Market Action Research, Inc. ("MARS") offers professional web services that encompasses all stages of web projects, including website planning to design, website development, web deployment, and enterprise level management. The MARS team can help you in starting a new web project from the ground up, adding brand new web features and upgrades, and can also take care of all of your website maintaince service needs too.
Keep reading to learn more about some of the most common benefits of DevOps.
What can DevOps Do For My Business?
The Benefits of DevOps and Why it Matters
The DevOps Advantage
There are several key advantages of a DevOps system, but they generally fall into six general categories, which includes speed, rapid delivery, increased reliability, scalability, improved collaboration, and security. Each of these areas within DevOps aims to make each part of the development process more streamlined with greater effectiveness and efficiency. Each development and operational environment is unique, which is why it takes a professional approach to determine the best strategy and tactics to implement in your web application, software, and technology lifecycles.
Even if you're not quite sure what your DevOps needs are, the Market Action Research team can help you determine what processes, changes, tools, etc. are needed to implement and effective model. Are you ready to get started, have a question, or need help figuring out how DevOps can benefit your business, then contact us today for your free consultation.
Common DevOps Practices
- Centralized Programming
- Automated Builds and Testing
- Continuous Integration Practices
- Continuous Testing
- Continuous Delivery
- Microservices Architecture
- Version Control
- Configuration Management
- Policy as Code (PCI-DSS, HIPPA, etc.)
- Monitoring, Logging, and Reporting
- Project Management & Communications Tools
Continuous Integration (CI) in DevOps
Traditional code integration techniques are known to create "siloed" working environments. This typically leads to more time consuming integrations, discovering issues only at the end of software iterations, downtime for development and operation teams between merge times, long feedback cycles, and more time from the start to finish of a single iteration. This is why the practice of Continuous Integration (CI) in DevOps is helpful. CI is a development practice where code is continuously integrated into a shared code base by the development teams that are creating the code, which reduces or eliminates the need for a build and integration team. This allows for shortening the integration and feedback cycles by focusing on fast code compilations, packaging, unit testing, UI testing, reporting, and where possible automation. Simply put, Continuous Integration saves times, money, and means companies can shorten iteration cycles and have faster time-to-market.
Continuous Development (CD) in DevOps
In traditional operations cycles, like in integration, many of steps are hindered by efforts existing in silos. For instance, in a traditional operation cycle it is up to the developers to provide deployment instructions to the operations team. In some cases this works just fine, but in more complex projects this can often cause more errors and longer iterations. This is mostly due to having multiple manual steps, which by it's nature is more prone to errors. In general, deployments in this setting are very sophisticated, and when it goes wrong the errors typically are high-impact and cause downtime. In DevOps, Continuous Delivery (CD) aims to solve this issue by having software practices that can be released to production or testing at any time. This is generally accomplished through the creation of custom scripts and the use of software to streamline the operations processes, which is includes the practices of Continuous Testing (CT). This dramatically decreases delivery time by removing as many manual steps as possible, while reducing errors, simplifying sophisticated deployments, and minimizing or eliminating downtime.
What to expect with CI/CD in DevOps
Continuous Integration (CI) & Continuous Development (CD) in DevOps are two key central points between the development and operations cycles. Using best practices in these areas helps increase efficiency and effectiveness, while reducing or eliminating errors and bottlenecks. While many things can be made to be automated in the use of these models, it is important to realize that as of the year there can still be some limitations and even drawbacks to automating parts that would be best overseen by a human team. This is why it is advisable to have a very clear understanding of your development and operations in processes to help determine which parts are more suitable for software, automation, human management, or something else.
When all parts of a project's development and operations are clearly understood and processes are well defined, processes can mature into Continuous Deployment, also sometimes referred to as "CD". This is similar to Continuous Development, but differs in that software is automatically released to production continuously instead of being something can happen automatically. It is important to note that typically only large enterprises with a high level of process maturity use Continuous Deployment due to the possible risks that can be involved. This is why some organizations opt for a hybrid model that takes the best of both worlds. This of course depends on multiple factors, which is why there is no such thing as a one size fits all solution.
Ready to implement DevOps in your business, have a question, or need help identifying your development and operations processes? Contact us today contact us for a free consultation.