What is DevOps? A Guide to the Lifecycle and Key Practices

DevOps is a set of procedures that require a cultural change in companies. It is a movement, it is the desire to do things in a way that focuses on communication, collaboration, and integration between those who develop and those who operate, to build more agile and efficient teams.

Lately, the word “DevOps” has gained a lot of relevance. If it were clothing, it would be the latest fashion trend, but we must clarify something: to say “We are DevOps”, knowledge in different areas is needed and also previous experience.  

DevOps is a fundamental culture of modern software practice for successful analytics and big data projects.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a set of methodologies and best practices, it is a work approach that seeks to improve software delivery in a shared and responsible way. Its name comes from the union of two words “Development” and “Operations”, that is, Development and Operations. 

In a technology project, we find two large groups. On one side are the developers who are responsible for developing the pillars and ensuring the efficiency of the programs and their purpose is to produce software. On the other side are the operators and their purpose is to maintain the stable operation of the product. Both sectors prioritize their objectives, and often there is poor communication between them. This is the ‘traditional’ work model, where everyone works independently. Companies today need to launch products quickly. With this traditional model, it is impossible.

This is where the concept of “DevOps” is born, where communication, collaboration, integration, and automation prevail; when the wall falls, the first thing you enable is a communication flow between developers and operations. 

Finally, a learning culture must be created; it is very important that the team is in constant learning. Some companies like Netflix ‘sabotage’ their own products to know what things are wrong, to identify system weaknesses, and learn from mistakes to improve.

The term ‘DevOps’ has evolved over time. It was first the union of developers and operations, but today it represents other types of unions, since the idea of this term is to unify and connect. Some examples:

DevSecOps - this is a form of union between developers, security, and operations, 

QAOps - is the union of QA and operations, 

NoOps - is a case where you no longer want the operations team to exist. Here teams must be able to self-organize to deploy,  

DataOps - is the union of Data Scientists and the operations team.  

The important thing is to notice that the term DevOps breaks the barrier between teams, to improve communication, collaboration, and integration in all areas. This article addresses the discipline of DevOps.

Stay tuned to our blog and future posts on other disciplines. 

Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD), and Continuous Delivery

One of the first practices in the development area involving DevOps is continuous integration. 

Continuous integration is a software development practice where developers make code changes in a repository periodically.   

The proposal is not to create large pieces, but to create parts of a piece and each time these parts are considered large enough to perform an integration test, that development is released to a continuous integration tool.  

The tool periodically validates that the different teams are integrated. Jenkins is one of the best-known tools that allows automating tests. 

On the Operations side, we have two applications: continuous delivery and continuous deployment. 

Continuous delivery is a software development practice to automatically prepare code changes and deliver them to the production phase.

Continuous deployment is a development practice to deploy our software in production WITHOUT human intervention at the time of deployment. 

The difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment is that the former requires manual approval before implementation while the latter performs approval automatically. 

DevOps Lifecycle

The DevOps lifecycle corresponds to the steps the source code of software goes through to be deployed in an environment. In other words, it is the set of steps a piece of code takes to reach its destination and become an application.

We start with the planning phase - deciding what and how it will be done. Then comes the coding phase where specialists begin to code, next is the build phase: it takes all the code from all specialists and compiles it, then comes the testing phase where we apply automated tests to each artifact that has just been built. Then comes the release phase where we take what was built in previous phases and store it in an accessible place so the process can continue. 

Then comes the deployment phase which takes what was created previously and tries to deliver it to the user, next is the operation phase which deals with the configuration of environments and the structure itself, finally there is the monitoring phase where metrics are reviewed and it is ensured that everything is fine. Below we will give a more detailed explanation of each one. 

Phase 1 - Planning 

All projects, regardless of area or theme, need a vision that indicates to all participants the reason and purpose of the work to be done. In this stage, you define a minimum set of functionalities that add value in each iteration and the acceptance criteria to be met. Communication between the business and the development team is key. 

Start by developing a plan to achieve the set objective. Everyone involved works during the iteration to achieve a clear goal. Then you define the team's tasks and present the requirements to be implemented in the platform or product. 

Phase 2 - Coding 

After defining the plan, we move on to coding the application according to the requirements agreed with the client. Here you start developing the project software. These developments progress in small processes in the development cycle.

At the same time, you start defining the tests you will perform on your piece to ensure it meets the functional specification. On the operations side, they begin building the necessary automations for  and  of the software.  The project manager ensures that the development team is familiar with the use of security tools and possible attacks that this new software piece may face. 

Phase 3 - Build 

The goal of this phase is to build the application by integrating various codes made in the coding phase. Once the application is built, it is time to create the new artifacts that make up the software, including new functionalities. This process is critical because an error in code integration can cause the project to stop working. 

In this phase of the DevOps lifecycle, software development is continuous and iterative; each part advances in the process. This is beneficial for the team as it speeds up the process and ensures delivery.

Phase 4 - Testing 

In this phase, you execute tests to verify the correct functioning of all project features. You must consider not only new tests but also those that ensure compliance with the specification of existing functionalities. 

The QA team uses tools to identify and correct errors in the new code continuously; if any test is unsatisfactory, you can make corrections by returning to the previous phase (Build). 

In the planning stage, you already defined the unit and integration tests you will perform. 

Phase 5 - Release 

Once the application has passed all functional and integration tests, you can create a software version. The goal is to indicate that it has passed all previous validations; these validations can be used by users in the future. This phase integrates with existing code, tests are performed, and it is worth noting that continuous development is only possible due to continuous integration and testing.  

Phase 6 - Operation 

This is the phase where the operations team takes control of the application in production.  You must ensure there are no strange or inappropriate behaviors, errors that may be found in production. You must alert other team members about the problems that occurred, make immediate decisions (suspend, rollback, etc.), and plan necessary improvements before returning to production.  

Phase 7 - Monitoring

In the last phase, you establish which parameters to monitor in the application. We will collect all the information gathered over a period of time to make necessary adjustments in the next planning phase. It is also in this phase that the operations team defines measures to monitor and control the health status of applications and their infrastructure. 

Conclusion 

When teams work independently, errors can arise in the project. This leads teams to blame each other, losing focus on the situation, which is to solve the problem; both areas together must first identify what the problem is and then solve it.

This is why this new culture was born, to solve that kind of problem and break down the wall that divides them. DevOps emerged with the goal of uniting the different teams or people involved in a project. The idea is that all teams have a common goal: to enable and facilitate innovation, increase productivity and team deliveries, manage defects earlier, reduce downtimes, and improve resilience. 

If you want to adopt these DevOps practices, you should start by evaluating a cultural change in your team, adding new technologies,  high communication between teams, greater collaboration and development,  injecting agility into projects, among many others.  Any organization can adopt the “DevOps” methodology  and adapt it to its processes and  will have a higher chance of success when creating, developing, and delivering software. 

Ready to implement DevOps in your organization?

At Kranio, we help you adopt DevOps practices that improve collaboration between teams and accelerate the delivery of high-quality software. Contact us and discover how we can boost the efficiency of your technology projects.