What is DevOps as a service and do you need it in your company?

DevOps is not only a strange buzzword but also a powerful approach that can benefit your business. In this article, we will describe what is DevOps as a service and how it can improve your work.

There is a big myth about DevOps as simple cooperation between developers and IT Operation teams. But in reality, this is a complex approach based on the Agile manifesto. We even can say that DevOps is a practical implementation of Agile methodology. Before DevOps, the most popular approach to software development was a Waterfall model. It looks like… well, waterfall. This is a cascade model where the project is built step by step. At first, the developers’ team writes all the code than Quality Assurance (QA) team makes all the tests and then the IT Operations team deploys the project. But if code has bugs (it definitely has) QA team needs to return it to the developers. They make bugfix and give code for testing again. IT Operations at this time should create the testing environment for any case. All this looks like continuous throwing responsibility over the wall. The Waterfall makes development quite long.

Does Agile change everything?

There was a lot of mess in the development community and the most enthusiastic community members decided to stop it by creating an Agile Manifesto. This is a list of 12 rules about a flexible approach to software development and a respectful attitude in teams. DevOps is also called a practical implementation of Agile methodology.

DevOps methodology provides strong collaboration between developers, QA engineers and IT Operations, or DevOps engineers. Also, it’s based on some principles that change the development process and neutralize Waterfall disadvantages. Let’s have a look at these principles.

Main DevOps principles

DevOps culture is represented by human communication, technical processes and tools. DevOps transformation pays a lot of attention to process automation and making strong communication between teams.

  • Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. This principle is also called CI/CD. Thanks to this practice, DevOps makes software development faster. The developer writes code in small chunks that can be easily tested and deployed to the main part of code. This process makes adding new features very smooth and fast.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC). This principle makes CI/CD possible. DevOps engineer can create a specific customizable environment for testing and deployment. QA and development teams can use this infrastructure for their needs and customize it by setting different parameters. Usually, settings are stored in a textual file written in descriptive language, so it’s very simple to use.
  • Monitoring and improvement. DevOps approach also includes continuous monitoring and improvement of the system. IaC allows DevOps engineers to free up time for finding bottlenecks and improvements.

There are more principles, practices and tools but we’ve listed the main of them for a basic understanding of DevOps as a service.

So, do you need DevOps transformation?

DevOps approach can be quite beneficial, especially for big and long projects. It optimizes work and processes, so your team can be more efficient. You should be ready that it will take time and other resources but the result worth it. Some small companies might not need the DevOps implementation but if your project is scaling and the team becomes bigger, you should weight pros and cons, and make the right decision.

In any case, DevOps implementation can significantly improve your internal processes and bring a great profit as a result.