The DevOps Culture’s Influence in Today’s Tech Companies
The DevOps Culture’s Influence in Today’s Tech Companies
June 9, 2023
The DevOps culture is more than a software development workflow methodology. Since 2007, this approach has been adopted by technology companies and, at least, one thing is certain: the production processes run at a faster pace and are now less prone to errors.
In general, the DevOps approach seek the collaboration between the development (“Dev”) and operations (“Ops”) teams in order to obtain better results with the minimum risk.
Applying the principles of this business culture, however, implies structural changes in the organization of the entire company, as well as on the efforts of all employees. For this reason, technology companies are increasingly betting on people with technical skills, but also soft and interpersonal skills, such as communication and teamwork.
In this article, we will review the definition of DevOps, go through the principles on which this culture is based, the benefits and challenges of the DevOps culture for companies, the most used workflow tools and the relationship of this model with cybersecurity.
Table of Contents
2.The Principles of DevOps Culture
3.Implementing the DevOps Culture in a Company
4.About DevOps and Cybersecurity
What is DevOps Culture?
It is multidisciplinary, highly collaborative and used especially in technology companies. There are people who define DevOps as the use of automation and testing in all phases of software development. On the other hand, there are others who go even further and define it as an approach that treats all teams in a company coding.
The name DevOps is a combination of the words “development” and “operations” and that makes it very clear what the core concept of DevOps culture is. To explain it concisely, the DevOps culture consists of automating processes and promoting collaboration between the development and operation areas within a company, in order to monitor the life cycle of a digital product and minimize errors. However, this culture is not limited to keeping up with the development of the product itself: the entire life cycle of a software is monitored through the constant collection of feedback, and it is updating it whenever necessary.
By encouraging regular cooperation, the DevOps culture makes teams work at a faster pace until software is released to the market, while minimizing possible failures.
In addition, by monitoring the entire life cycle of a software, this approach reduces the response time if the digital product needs to be updated.
During this lifecycle, teams working under the DevOps culture follow a loop that can be infinite: Plan > Code > Build > Test > Release > Deploy > Operate > Monitor > Plan.
In addition to these steps, the feedback given throughout all stages of the development chain is essential for the software to be adapted to the market continuously.
The Principles of the DevOps Culture
DevOps culture is closely linked with the automation of time-consuming procedures and with collaboration between teams. These two main pillars are essential to streamline the development of a technological product.
In addition to these pillars, the DevOps culture can be subdivided into different principles, each with other associated concepts.
The Continuous Delivery Principle
One of the characteristics of the DevOps model is that each piece of the project is handed over to the operations team as it is being done. The so-called continuous delivery principle makes it easier and faster to detect errors, as shorter pieces of code are analyzed and tested at a time.
This continuous monitoring also promotes greater security throughout all stages of the development chain, as failures and vulnerabilities in the code are resolved on demand.
The agile delivery of the final product is another characteristic associated with the DevOps culture, since automation speeds up the entire testing phase and, therefore, it is possible to build the digital product in less time.
For the principle of continuous delivery to work smoothly, processes need to be integrated and communication channels open between the development and operations teams. This intersecting in the DevOps culture is known as the principle of continuous integration.
Principle of Continuous Integration
Characterized by the open doors to collaboration and communication, this principle is responsible for the interaction, spirit of commitment and shared responsibility between teams who are working on a given project.
By being closely linked, both teams are responsible for planning, developing, and launching a product with the minimum of flaws in the shortest possible time.
Because all teams are equally important and responsibility is shared, the DevOps culture encourages planning and developing a digital product focused on the real needs of customers or users.
And, in order to better understand the needs of users, constant feedback is requested throughout the development process, and also after the product has been launched on the market. Thus, software is constantly being updated to better serve those who use it.
At the same time, these teams are autonomous and multidisciplinary, taking important decisions without resorting to bureaucratic processes.
All these principles are more than a work methodology. In fact, these give real value to a digital product and, indirectly, bring profit to the company that has adopted a DevOps culture.
Implementing a DevOps Culture in a Company
The DevOps Benefits
Because DevOps culture relies on collaboration, automation, and constant feedback, technology companies have a lot to gain by adopting this culture and model of software development.
One of the main benefits that a collaborative model brings to companies is the reduction of failures throughout the software life cycle. In addition, teams become more autonomous and confident in their work.
By its turn, automation frees up a range of human, material and financial resources. In addition, it saves testing time, allowing software to be released to the market in less time and/or updated whenever necessary, never letting it become completely obsolete. The recovery time in the event of a security breach also turns out to be shorter, which only increases the quality of the software and the profit of the company.
Finally, constant feedback throughout the lifecycle of a software makes it adapt better to the market and the real needs of users. Moreover, customer service is taken into consideration, adding value to the product under development.
The DevOps Challenges
Implementing a DevOps culture is not just about incorporating more work tools that integrate the various stages of the software development chain. In fact, implementing a DevOps culture involves making structural changes in the way teams are organized and in the way developers and engineers themselves think about the development of a digital product.
This is one of the main challenges in transitioning to a DevOps work model, especially if the transition is not done naturally. Many companies used to work in compartments and changing this whole way of development is an arduous task. For this to work, it is crucial to implement practices and tools that facilitate communication between different people and departments.
As for the software development chain, the challenges essentially include:
- Transitions of a part of the code to another environment to be tested and compiled, which can take longer, since the codebase must be reconfigured.
- Transversal monitoring of the entire process, as the different parts of a software have to be moved for testing and compiling.
- Updates that are not compatible and may block the supply chain.
- Automatic tests with errors, due to an incorrect tool’s configuration.
- Tests that do not support the escalation of a project and increase of data.
- Vulnerabilities in the code, which can make it more susceptible to cyberattacks.
- Development and operations tools that may conflict.
- Choose appropriate tools for each company and each project and that, in fact, facilitate communication and are intuitive.
The Best Tools for a DevOps Culture
With more and more companies implementing a DevOps culture, the number of tools developed for this work model is countless. And the speed at which they are put on the market makes it difficult to choose the one that best aligns with the company’s vision and/or the needs of a given project.
As for development tools, we suggest:
Git / GitHub – Collaborative opensource platform that allows you to develop software and manage every change made to the code.
Docker – It lets you collaborate, create, and move code in blocks quickly and easily.
In order to better integrate the various phases of a project, there are teams that use tools such as:
Jenkins – Server built for automation that facilitates the development process, continuous delivery, code movement and testing.
Buddy – Continuous integration platform that assists in moving blocks of code and integrates feedback.
Bamboo – Allows integration of several phases of a project, code movement and compilation in just one production line.
In case companies do not want to integrate the tests into a general continuous integration platform, there are platforms that allow them to be done automatically, such as:
Tricentis Tosca – Without having to write code, this platform automates tests and incorporates all aspects related to testing.
Selenium – in addition to automating software testing, this tool also automates administrative tasks.
Regarding the monitoring of software already launched on the market, we emphasize the following:
Sensu – Monitors the entire infrastructure of a digital product, as well as the entire underlying network and systems. In addition, it monitors KPI and presents performance analysis.
Nagios – Opensource software that monitors systems, networks and infrastructure of a digital product and notifies users when a failure is detected.
About DevOps and Cybersecurity
Regardless of the work model used to develop software, cybersecurity is essential to protect customer and employee data, digital products under development and even the financial capital of the company in question.
In a DevOps culture, where communication channels are constantly open, cybersecurity strategies are never enough. However, most companies that work under this methodology report that cybersecurity in a DevOps model still has a long way to go to become as holistic as this work model itself.
One of the challenges that cybersecurity teams face in a DevOps work environment is the speed at which a project progresses. Cybersecurity may not be able to keep up with the accelerated pace at which software is developed and delivered for testing.
However, with test automation, it is possible to find most code vulnerabilities and make the necessary improvements to increase the security of the software.
To end with, in a world where cybercriminals are constantly testing new ways to enter networks and attack companies’ APIs, it is essential to outline Zero Trust strategies, so that all stages of the development chain in the DevOps culture are protected. These measures are applied before any developer starts to code and at every stage of software development.
Final considerations
The DevOps culture uses collaboration and automation to add value to the developed software, but for it to work, certain principles must be applied to at least two teams: the software development team and the operations team.
These two pillar teams are asked to continuously deliver developed code and to be continuously integrated into each other’s work. In this way, it is possible to streamline the planning and development of a digital product, as well as the testing phase. In the end, the only stage left is to launch it on the market.
Furthermore, the DevOps culture, by inciting constant feedback, adds quality to the software and value to the company that creates it.
Do you think the DevOps culture is what your business need to grow even more? Talk to us!