How DevOps can speed up the Software Development Process?

From time to time, any developer who needs to write code for a database will be in a situation where they turn to the database administrator.

The database administrator says: “You cannot use our data and we cannot provide you with our own database. Please ask the operation team.” Then they go to the operations manager, only to hear, “We don't have a backup database license; it took 6 months to get it. We'll see what we can do."

Now, even though database administrator s and operations managers are only fulfilling their duties, developers and companies are stuck in a slow process. This is where DevOps software development comes in.

The main goal of adopting a DevOps automation approach is to promote communication, share development responsibilities, and prioritize collaboration by breaking down organizational silos and accelerating performance hierarchies.

What is DevOps in software development?

The DevOps approach to software development connects your development and operations teams to collaborate and build high-quality products throughout the software development lifecycle. Throughout the lifecycle, operations teams use many of the techniques and tools that developers use and vice versa.

A working example of this DevOps development process mindset and culture is the operations team, who use the GitHub content repository as co-developers so they can also streamline the software development automation process.

When developers and operations teams work together, their roles within DevOps in software engineering are clearly defined.

Role of engineers in the DevOps development process

• Gathering resources
• Designing
• Developing
• Testing
• Refining the product backlog
• Ensuring the continuous delivery process

Role of the operations team in the DevOps development process

• Maintenance and deployment
• Managing the software security
• Server and storage configuration management
• Renting out the server space
• Managing the software outage

The main benefits of DevOps automation in software development

DevOps methodology plays a big role in accelerating development plans; It does that through its many benefits that drive the automation of the software development process. Let's take a look at them.

Better testing options

Testing your software for bugs requires a fair mix of functional and non-functional testing. DevOps automation is especially helpful in this regard as it helps scale the system when needed.

Testing remains an important part of DevOps in software development, where success depends heavily on reliability and speed. The approach promises software that can easily handle heavy traffic - a guarantee that constant regression testing promises.

Product quality improvement

Using DevOps in software engineering helps you develop high-quality products quickly and reduces unnecessary development waste that can be costly.

One of the main areas where DevOps automation helps ensure product quality is traditional deployment, which can take weeks or days. Under the new model, when you build software from the source code phase, you can easily release the code immediately without waiting for approval from other stakeholders, as long as it meets all the necessary criteria.

Better use

If you want to release new feature sets and fix bug fixes quickly, incorporating DevOps automation into your app development process can speed deployment and get new features to users more quickly. This in turn causes users to become more engaged with the platform.

Faster time to market

DevOps encourages coordination between developers, system administrators, QA testers and many other IT professionals, resulting in rapid product releases.

Today, every company wants to enter the market faster, and DevOps automation in software development is the fastest way to achieve this. In a traditional setting, both the development team and the operations team worked independently, resulting in a lot of back and forth which slowed the speed of development and deployment.

However, with the DevOps methodology, information travels quickly, resulting in things being decided during the development process rather than the deployment phase.

Better security

When we work on software development, security is the main factor we consider; However, cases of security hacks appeared much later. However, using a DevOps automation approach to testing improves security in your organization and protects your software from vulnerabilities. This works against the backdrop that DevOps practice from an SDLC perspective brings together the two important teams responsible for security in one place.

Now that we have looked into what DevOps services for software development is and the role both teams play, let us look into the benefits of DevOps in software engineering – something that would give us a holistic view into the role of the concept in expediting the development speed.

With that said, we've covered some aspects of DevOps practice - what it is, the benefits of DevOps automation in software development, and what the DevOps software lifecycle looks like. It all boils down to finding ways to speed up the development schedule.

How can DevOps accelerate application development and delivery?

DevOps Practices are packed with features that speed up the development process without compromising product quality and efficiency. Here are eight ways DevOps-led automation of app development makes the process efficient.

Automation

There is no doubt that automating the software development process is the future of the domain as well as one of its biggest trends. With DevOps you can automate the software lifecycle.

This approach allows you to make real-time changes to your project after the repository triggers an action via automation. As an example of DevOps automation, let's look at the following: When a developer changes code, it triggers a build, which then triggers automated software deployment.

So the answer to how DevOps supports automation lies in the fact that it makes the development lifecycle much more efficient. It is a process that enhances the development, delivery and quality assurance of your software.

Continuous integration and continuous delivery

Continuous integration, or CI, is a process that allows developers to make changes to code without changing the underlying code.

On the other hand, Continuous Delivery is a process used to deliver software through an automation process. This helps in carrying out constant updates with a fixed frequency for each version of the application which has entered the production stage. You can use CI-CD's DevOps services to regularly roll code into production while ensuring that bugs are continuously fixed and new features added.

Improved construction

Efficient and fault-tolerant builds are the result of collaboration between development and operations. By establishing this type of collaboration, teams can consider key factors like performance, security, features, reliability, reusability and more.

The fact that teams work together for a common goal - building effective software - allows them to build and ship products faster.

Infrastructure as code

Infrastructure as Code is a DevOps automation solution that helps you deploy software quickly. It offers all the necessary resources to develop software in a clear and manageable manner.

This approach reduces the possibility of human error through automation, resulting in a safe and efficient process. Additionally, you can run configuration management tools consistent with servers, databases, system resources, and virtual machines.

Version control

Version control is another process that goes with any DevOps implementation. This allows developers to view version history and track revision changes. Its main purpose is to make it easier to analyze and recover code that needs to be revised.

By combining the code in the software into a single file, changes are simplified and more than one person can work on them simultaneously.

Agile software development

Apart from the Agile vs. DevOps has been going on for centuries, the industry found a way to bring them together. The agile DevOps approach is a future-ready practice that requires teamwork and end-user involvement in the process.

His specialty is finding room for improvement and making real-time changes that solve problems and meet your customers' expectations.

User Experience (UX)

When the UX team doesn't work closely with the developer, issues like bad experiences will arise. At the end of the cycle, when the operations team looks at the product's user experience, it prompts the developer to make changes to the code - something that affects the entire codebase.

DevOps software development helps you avoid these time-consuming and costly mistakes by collaborating with designers alongside developers.