Top 6 Benefits of DevOps for Business

It would be an understatement to say that the world is changing beyond fast. Every day new software appears on the market, new development tools are created, and new marketing campaigns are launched. To make your software solution stay afloat and up to date, you should consider implementing a DevOps approach. The benefits of DevOps implementation will definitely improve the efficiency of your team and improve the development process.

In this article, we are going to discuss what DevOps is, how your specialists can adopt it, and what challenges you may face. Now, let’s start with the definition of DevOps.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a software engineering practice bringing together software development and operations. It is usually looked at both from the technological and philosophical perspectives.

Technologically, DevOps is all about boosting application development quality and speed and minimizing errors through the automation of crucial routine processes. As a way of thinking, DevOps focuses on unifying traditionally isolated engineering, operations, and testing teams through continuous learning, expertise sharing, and communication.

Automation of the application development processes, such as building, testing, deployment, maintenance, and monitoring, is one of the DevOps benefits that can save your project in some situations. Another advantage of this practice is building a bridge between support specialists who monitor the system for issues and certain engineers who can solve those issues.

Now, let’s go into more detail and see why DevOps is needed and exactly how it can make the life of the team easier at each stage of project development.

What are the benefits of DevOps for business?

Here comes the main part: How DevOps can upgrade the quality of your software.

#1 Your code is ready to be delivered to the end-user at any point in time

One of the most vivid advantages of DevOps is shifting to continuous integration, delivery, and deployment. What does that mean?

It means that every line of code your engineers commit to a repository will be automatically built and tested to make sure the code is always ready to be delivered to an end-user. The actual deployment takes place in the background, without a single interruption in the work of the application, right when it's needed.

On the other hand, if the build hasn’t been completed successfully, all concerned engineers will be immediately notified via email, in a messenger app, or in any other way and will be able to quickly handle the problem.

What's good about it:

• No need for “manual labor”—engineers don’t have to manually build and test every update anymore, so updates are delivered much faster
• Early detection of errors in the code, allowing to promptly make the necessary adjustments until the code reaches the end-user

#2: Your team will be more cooperative and coherent

When a team starts to use DevOps practices, its members become happier and less stressed. DevOps allow them to focus on the cooperative goal and help them reach it. With a more successful team, there is more room for experimenting and innovation. The combined work of every team member makes processes clearer.

What's good about it:

• Your team is happier
• Internal processes are clearer and easier to monitor

#3: Your end-users will be more satisfied with your software

This benefit stems directly from what we mentioned above. Customers will experience faster updates and better usability which means they will be happier with what you offer them. Also, you can react to the customers’ feedback right away. It will help you build more trustful relationships with your clientele.

What's good about it:

• More loyal customers
• Positive brand image

Technical benefits of DevOps

DevOps directly has a direct influence on the workflow and the final software product. The benefits listed below will improve the quality of your software and positively affect your business results.

#1 Your code is properly covered by tests

We've talked a bit about testing in the previous point, but it deserves a little more of our attention because that is another answer to the urgent question "why do you need DevOps?".

Constant and continuous testing and QA are a cornerstone of smooth, continuous deployment. To comply with the needs of continuous deployment, they have to be dynamic and take place early and often. Apparently, manual testing cannot live up to these characteristics as it’s too slow, and here automated testing comes into play.

Most types of tests, from UI tests focusing on usability issues to load testing identifying bottlenecks in the application’s performance during peak traffic, can be automated. The major benefit of automated tests is that they can be run whenever necessary and on a regular basis, thus minimizing the possibility that bugs will slip into newer code versions. Moreover, when the tests are properly architectured, they can be easily maintained and safely reused further in the project, with the necessary adjustments made to them, corresponding to the changes in the project’s functionality or UI.

What's good about it:

• Speed — every batch of codelines can be tested immediately after it’s committed
• Early detection of errors, as there’s no need to wait for the results of manual testing
• Transparency — bug reports are generated automatically and always available to the entire team (and you can always contact ours!)

#2 Your code is tested live in a production-like environment

Here is another reason why DevOps is important. Testing code early in various environments, such as development, staging, and production, helps avoid further deployment issues, let’s say poor scalability or server capacity, and makes sure the app will run as smoothly on 100 users’ devices as it does on one engineer's computer.

The infrastructure-as-code approach allows packing all processes connected with deploying environments into a code. Thus, the needed infrastructure exists in the form of software that can be quickly deployed whenever necessary, rather than a physical machine that has to be manually configured upon every setup, running through the entire cycle of the operating system launch. Besides, the infrastructure code, just like the application code, is constantly tested, version-controlled, and monitored for safety issues, making sure the application is tested in a completely secure environment.

What's good about it:

• No need for manual configuration of each environment
• The infrastructure for testing is safe and reliable due to constant testing and version control

#3 Your code is continuously monitored for performance issues

It may seem that the benefits of DevOps are uncountable, but don’t worry, this one is the last here. Application performance monitoring is another important thing in creating your project, whether it is a huge framework or a small chatbot. Application performance tools can answer a lot of crucial questions. How much memory and processor capacity the app consumes? How quickly does a system respond to user actions? How much time does the app need to be built and deployed? In case these metrics are properly recorded and processed, they can be used to make key business decisions.

What is good about it:

• Calculated decision-making based on real-time app metrics
• Early issue detection
• Tracking of progress (or the lack of it) in adjusting further app development strategy

Challenges of DevOps

You have probably already guessed that implementing DevOps is not a breeze. We are going to describe several challenges you can encounter and the ways to overcome or avoid them.

#1: Moving to microservices

Even though you may think that your legacy software and infrastructure are working just fine, it will eventually get left behind by more scalable and more modern competitors. Moving from a monolithic architecture to microservices is a complex process that will require a lot of effort and resources.

How to deal with it:

• Follow the clear strategy of moving to microservices
• Use infrastructure-as-code
• Don’t panic

#2: Too much attention to tools

When you adopt DevOps for your team, it’s easy to get distracted by the pool of fancy new tools that will be useful for DevOps. However, without the proper org structure, the implementation of DevOps practices can get confusing and difficult to use.

How to deal with it:

• Move the focus from tools to your team
• Arrange the ongoing training process

#3: Resistance to change

Moving from traditional development practices to DevOps can be frightening for both team members and top managers. Some people can take it personally when you tell them that they need to change something. Your task here is to make clear for everyone that DevOps will be beneficial to the team.

How to deal with it:

• Present it not as a quick revolution (it’s impossible anyway) but as a gradual evolution
• Start small: Choose a small project or a particular part of code to implement DevOps for the first time

How to implement the DevOps approach to your business?

In order to successfully implement DevOps and stick to this approach, you should consider four main stages of a typical DevOps pipeline:

• Source code control: New versions of the system are delivered quickly.
• Testing automation: Polishing the system and fixing the necessary issues.
• Release automation: Connecting and automating tasks performed by multiple teams.
• Deployment: Monitoring the new version of the system in the production environment.

What is the future of DevOps?

DevOps is a constantly evolving area so there is no wonder it is full of new trends. When you implement this practice, it’s important to follow these trends to stay up to date and optimize the work of your team. Here is what you should know about the future of DevOps.

• Microservices are on the rise

More and more applications will move to microservices. This architecture allows businesses to easily manage and update the product without additional risks.

• Security is a top priority

It will be impossible to imagine DevOps without a decent security level. Some experts already include it as a default part of the process creating a new term — DevSecOps. The personal data of users should be protected, so there is no wonder this trend appears.

• AI/ML implementation

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are widely used by tech and non-tech companies to automate and facilitate all kinds of processes. DevOps is not an exception here. The research provided by Gartner suggests that by 2023, 40% of DevOps teams will use AI to improve their work.

• More automation

Tech companies already implement automation for certain processes and flows. The usage of automated tools will only increase with time: Businesses understand their advantages and adopt them for speeding up routine tasks and eliminating the human error factor.

Conclusion

Though DevOps really makes lives easier, especially when it comes to big, constantly evolving projects, one should remember it’s not a magic pill that can be taken once and then put away until it’s needed again. Business benefits of DevOps can be noticed and estimated only in the long run.

This practice can’t be introduced by simply hiring a “DevOps engineer” or reducing manual testing. It requires wide and carefully selected methodology of changing the mindset of every team member toward understanding and adopting all DevOps values and putting them into practice.

Every detail — from how team members communicate with each other, how willingly they share project information, to how they approach tasks and challenges — contributes to adopting the DevOps culture within the company. It’s a good idea to take a strategy of small steps to make sure you don’t miss a thing. The DevOps Checklist is a nice thing to help on the road.

Implementing DevOps is a long and dusty trail, but it’s definitely worth hitting.