Welcome to the first instalment of the DevOps and SDLC blog series, brought to you by Snapbytes. We’ve launched this series in order to impart some of our years of experience within the software development world. So each month, we’re going to bring you a new and thought-provoking blog post. We also want to start a conversation with fellow developers, both those who have been in the game for as long as we have or even longer, and those who are just starting out or are completely new to this space. No matter which category you fall into, please feel free to chat to us in the comments. And without further ado, here’s your first instalment in the series — DevOps vs SDLC…
Trying to imagine a world without software is like trying to imagine a world without sliced bread. It just doesn’t make sense. And that’s because software is the best thing since sliced bread. It’s become a part of almost all aspects of our daily lives. So, it’s only natural that there’s a constant race to be at the forefront of software development by delivering applications, services and products at ever faster rates. That my friends, as some of you might already be aware, is where DevOps and SDLC come in.
So why DevOps? You can enumerate several reasons but one stands out over the others: The Need for Speed! Be it a launch of an app before your competitors or a bug fix before significant losses, in the end it all comes down to speed. That’s why one of the key metrics of DevOps is the lead time:
“How long would it take your organization to deploy [from code commit stage to production] a change that involved just one single line of code? Do you deploy changes at this pace on a repeatable, reliable basis?” — Mary and Tom Poppendieck
You might think that you don’t need to be that fast, so DevOps isn’t for you… Well that’s not necessarily true. By trying to improve your lead time, you will have to review your processes, eliminate waste, automate a lot, modernize your deployment infrastructure, the list goes on and on.
Following the DevOps practices and principles means that you’ll be so agile that even though you don’t release frequently, you’ll have significant benefits like:
Don’t let the name “DevOps” mislead you. It’s not just “Dev” + “Ops”. Before DevOps, there was Continuous Delivery (CD) and before that there was Continuous Integration (CI), extreme programming, etc… DevOps is an evolution of all of these practices, the latest known name for it. It basically grew from a sapling to a huge tree.
But being such a huge a tree means that climbing to the top is not easy. The good part is, there are lots of branches with different fruits along the way. You will gain a lot during your DevOps journey. Even if you don’t reach top, you will taste different flavors and enjoy it (except for our fellow DevOps engineers, they might step on some spines ☺).
Before beginning this journey, it is better to have a route already drawn out specifically for you. You might have a route with some stops or the fastest one depending on factors like the size of your organization, maturity of the teams, available resources, priorities, etc. DevOps is a set of many practices and principles like:
Additionally, in order to implement these, you may have to use many SDLC tools. Understanding the benefits and complexity of each practice and the tools that come with those requires expertise on different domains (development, automation, test, operation, security, etc.). Some assistance on these would make the planning much easier and more efficient.
At Snapbytes, we assist our customers by assessing their current SDLC maturity, planning the DevOps roadmap and guiding them through this journey. We’re experts in DevOps, Atlassian and custom development solutions. To find out how you and your business can benefit from DevOps practices and principles, please get in touch.
