DevOps Process Improvement: 7 Ways to Make It More Efficient

DevOps process improvement is an increasingly important process, but it can be challenging to get everything to come together. That’s why it’s quite helpful to stick to best practices and go-to-market strategies when launching new applications.

Things can always go wrong but, by following essential processes, such as building applications in a particular order with a specific set of tools, it will become far less likely that things will diminish from what’s intended.

So here’s how you can improve the delivery of new applications while keeping the DevOps principles in mind:

DevOps Process Improvement: How to Make It More Efficient

1. Audit And Plan

There was no intent to design this article to be a step by step guide, but some of the initial things to consider are:

• When a company’s business challenges are well defined, that company can determine how to address those challenges by assembling a DevOps process improvement team, creating a plan, and developing a strategy. This is how you can turn opportunity into success.
• The importance of proper IT infrastructure cannot be overstated. A small error in the configuration of the network can lead to long-term repercussions. Without a thorough assessment of IT infrastructure and systems, it’s nearly impossible to prepare for any potential crises or unforeseen problems.
• For any software integrator or developer, software delivery and lifecycle maturity assessment is not an idle pursuit. It’s vital to understand the evolution of the software lifecycle and identify areas for improvement as they lead to maximum efficiency and profitability.
• You need to have a well-designed roadmap. The roadmap design will give teams direction and help them see through the forest of data and feedback. It’ll also show stakeholders’ accomplishments, how they will benefit, and the company’s achievements.

2. Do More Regression Testing

Regression testing is a fundamental procedure that every software developer should use to ensure that features are stable and ready for use.

But regression tests take time to execute, and it’s hard to maintain such a level of vigilance over the entire software application. A more efficient way of intercepting errors early in the DevOps process is to set up tests that can run automatically.

Many factors, including sales and finance departments, can have an impact on project speed. With this in mind, engineers must document the corresponding risks of speed vs. quality.

Companies tend to develop products and services too quickly without proper documentation and often cause serious issues, ranging from poor quality to lost sales.

Something of note: Rather than being limited, the quality level must align with the app’s criticality. If a feature is financial or revenue-generating, it’s important to have testers review the code that supports the feature before a release.

Regression testing should be a routine part of the development process. If an app is online-based (especially higher-risk apps like finance and healthcare), preparation is vital.

3. Don’t Overthink It, Do What Works

The most efficient method of operating is to implement and align systems according to the end-to-end process. It makes communication flow more easily between people and departments, ensuring that everyone knows what to do and when to do it.

Here are some tips to help you implement standards and processes:

• Defining standard interfaces and endpoints makes it much easier and faster to get a product up and running with maximum capabilities – without the need to refactor or start from scratch.
• Logging and transaction instrumentation should be seamlessly incorporated into the process from day one. The Web is changing at a dizzying pace, meaning it’s becoming more and more critical for companies to use automation to streamline business processes, improve operations, and maximize efficiency.
• Development and operations are as inseparable as the hands and feet of an agile practitioner. Enterprises shouldn’t ignore development or be afraid of automation. Coding standards provide a clear standard language for enterprise stakeholders to communicate their needs. That language enables automation to increase efficiency, improve quality, and result in more sustainable and predictable business outcomes.
• Consistently managing data on all platforms and devices while maintaining its integrity is a full-time job. Data governance professionals ensure that the organization’s data remains secure, protecting it against misuse and maintaining it.

4. Continuous Deployment and Versioning

Continuous deployment is a methodology where the products are automatically deployed to the staging and production environments. Then, they must pass all the automated test cases in both the domains, QA and UAT.

You can make use of continuous deployment tools like Jenkins, Chef, Bamboo, etc. Once the code has passed all the automated test cases, it can deploy automatically on the latest version. In this manner, you can avoid any kind of manual intervention.

The process ensures that versions of the code are available at precise places. It efficiently tracks bug fixes and reverting the code to an earlier version without any hiccups.

5. Approach With A Data Mindset

DevOps is all about continuous performance improvement. The lack of performance means that development is not yet over.

Share your application’s graphs, usage patterns, and statistics with your team to bring everyone on the same page and lessen finger-pointing when projects go wrong! DevOps process improvement can simplify your entire process by including scalability, testing, and deployment tactics.

A cohesive approach to application performance ensures that development and operations teams work together to deliver an exceptional product. A repeatable, consistent, and iterative process can result in a continually improved app that improves customers’ experience.

6. Automate or Wilt Away

Automation is a must-have, and continuous integration is especially important. Without it, you won’t be able to take advantage of DevOps process improvement. Automation is a crucial part of building great software. But why?

Complete automation ensures leadership for the correct procedure because it’s codified and doesn’t require every developer to know every step in the process.

Businesses are continuously improving their software quality and testing against new standards. The numerous methods used to ensure software quality are critical and help companies significantly improve their processes.

There’s an entire body of software testing standards, procedures, and methodologies that can be applied to any digital product type.

Reassessing risk mitigation is crucial. The precautionary principle should be built into all business aspects so that no severe product bugs get released into the wild.

Good quality gate processes act as a way to avoid issues and pick up on them if they do happen. By heeding this principle, problems can be caught and managed before something serious occurs.

7. Do the basics

Emphasizing the basics is an opportunity to educate your staff and employees about the importance of professional code reviews.

You don’t want to develop a product riddled with bugs or affect your sales numbers because of sloppy coding practices. A senior resource is one of the most valuable members of your team for quality control.

Detailed senior oversight ensures a project will get the basics right, such as developers using configuration management to ensure controlled software reviews or collecting the necessary features and the stories with the acceptance criteria.

You must plan your project according to what it needs to meet carefully established goals. A framework is essential for the delivery of your project on time and on budget.

Last Words

The standard set of processes and tools to integrate Big Data, AI, and machine learning into your business should be the first stage of a digital transformation.

These stages include:

• choosing the right toolset for your business
• building seamless processes
• automating workflows
• ensuring that ITs infrastructure is reliable and robust.

Improving a company means getting rid of outdated systems, trimming costs, and finding ways to generate more revenue at the same time.

Here at Bunnyshell, we only use the most up-to-date practices and strategies to reduce clutter and save you time by implementing a coherent infrastructure.

The global Development and Operations (DevOps) Market size stood at USD 3,709.1 million in 2018 and is projected to reach USD 14,969.6 million by 2026, exhibiting a CAGR of 19.1% during the forecast period. Executing a new strategy cleanly, without hassles, is crucial for everyone involved in running a business. Successful implementation of strategy frees up valuable resources and results in savings at the same time.

Executing this correctly frees valuable resources and saves time and effort, allowing reinvigorating the business and pushing it to a new level.

We have found that keeping to the brief can be a challenge for many executives. Briefing them with weekly or monthly progress reports can help them see results and the savings that come from getting out of their comfort zone.