A DevOps Model: What It Is and Why It's Beneficial

Software development has changed significantly in recent years. This transformation is, in part, a response to challenges resulting from the traditional waterfall software development model. Under the old process, a software company receives a deadline for creating a product that's ready to roll out to customers. The firm activates its team of developers, which spends its time working on the product before handing over the project to the operations team. These individuals are responsible for testing and ultimately deploying the completed software. The problem with traditional approaches to software development is that developers and operations personnel maintain limited interaction with one another. Without proper integration, both teams can't bring their input to every stage of the project. Instead, an assignment must proceed in sequestered phases that commonly run into problems. Issues cause delays, thereby potentially interfering with the scheduled release of the product. Given these and other problems, it's no wonder more organizations are embracing a DevOps software development model. This standard requires such close collaboration between development and operations that the two groups are merged. In so doing, DevOps streamlines the software development by bringing otherwise disparate teams together and boosting their mutual productivity. Amazon sums up the key business advantages of DevOps in the following definition:

"DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market."

One of the integral changes in the shift to DevOps is automation, a force which has been taking tasks away from system administrators for the better part of the decade. With other positions like Integration Testers reduced by automation, former sysadmins now spend much of their time supporting developers, managing build integrations and making the new continuous deployment processes more efficient. Their focus is on implementation and operations, which allows DevOps practitioners to concentrate on software integration between different internal teams. The DevOps model promotes a more mature and productive work environment by bringing development and operations together. Members of both teams can constantly review code between each other, which reduces the likelihood of a project falling behind. It also helps improve the end product for the customer. Without one team dominating the project schedule, developers and operations work together to make sure they test, perfect and ensure the security of the product at each step of the process. Those are just some of the benefits of adopting a DevOps model. Organizations that commit to their own transition can expect to benefit technically from decreased complexity, quicker problem solving and continuous software delivery. Their culture will also profit from increased employee engagement, cross-disciple learning and more diverse professional development opportunities. Organizations interested in migrating to a DevOps model but might not know how to get started. To help those companies, Tripwire has published Driving DevOps Security: Scalable Cybersecurity Best Practices for Scalable Teams. This eBook highlights the potential pitfalls of a transition as well as key steps for successfully making the leap from a traditional software development model to a DevOps approach. For more information, download Tripwire's eBook here.