Top 8 DevOps Strategies to Test in 2021

DevOps is a customer-centric approach that delivers high-quality products using agile solutions, automation, and cross-team collaboration across an organization. This article looks at the key DevOps strategies that organizations can adopt in 2021 to make the most of the DevOps methodology. 

Need for a DevOps Strategy

DevOps is a customer-centric approach that delivers high-quality products using agile solutions, automation, and cross-team collaboration across an organization.

Organizations applying agile principles have now realized that there is more to it than just developing software. Business value is only achieved when the built software runs seamlessly in production and is used by customers as intended. Traditional agile teams only look after shippable code, whereas the operations team looks after maintaining applications. 

This is where an appropriate strategy is needed. DevOps fits perfectly into this picture, and though it’s just a decade old, it plays an important role in achieving the key goals of an organization. While many organizations flourish after incorporating DevOps, numerous others encounter bitter failure from experience. Why the difference, you may wonder. Well, it’s pretty simple. Those succeeding in their DevOps efforts initiate the journey with a comprehensive strategy in mind.

So, why do organizations need a DevOps strategy? Here are a few challenges it could resolve.

1. Delay in release & deployment

To stay ahead of competitors, organizations must have rapid release cycles. The agile methodology focuses on delivering features after each sprint. On the other hand, operations teams line up sprints from various teams and combine them to push for production releases.

Organizations are constantly behind schedules on new feature releases or deployments that may need months, if not weeks, to make developed features available for users. A DevOps strategy acts as a bridge between these two approaches and focuses on continuous delivery of features by heavily relying on automated development, testing, and deployment operations. 

2. Difficulty in steering agile toward collaboration  

Most agile teams function with blinders who do not focus on actions beyond their teams or work outside their boundary. Enabling cross-team collaboration becomes difficult in this scenario, wherein agile teams experience failure. The DevOps strategy focuses on increased communication and collaboration across all departments, especially for new product development. The result of team collaboration and joint ownership can result in better code quality and velocity of development. 

3. Inability to make DevOps principles stick

Six main principles support the DevOps methodology: continuous integration, continuous delivery, continuous testing, continuous deployment, continuous operations, and collaboration. Often, organizations value workflow automation but face massive difficulty in pulling it off. Inability to make any of these principles work indicates the lack of an appropriate strategy and creating a necessary DevOps culture to be feasible. 

4. Unsatisfactory release practices 

Manual intervention, along with inconsistency of processes, is often the root cause for recurring issues. This includes the release of bad quality code, mismanaged release practices, and unsupervised configuration changes. 

On the other hand, when iterative code development is done using DevOps, it is produced under a careful microscopic lens resulting in faster detection and removal of bugs and errors from the codebase. This software quality assurance effectively blocks bad code from being released and helps organizations save unnecessary code patchwork or even scrapping products entirely.

5. Failure to deploy quickly

There’s no point in spending hours developing a unique feature if your competitor jumps in and beats you to the market. Simply sitting on a code repository and waiting for the perfect time to deploy it will lead to depreciation in its value over time. Failure to deploy features quickly negatively affects an organization’s ROI and hinders its ability to gain business value at the earliest.

6. Difficulty in performing tests within sprints 

Testing for performance, security verification, and compliance is done after a sprint is completed. The problem with this approach is that any errors discovered during this period increase the time spent on feedback loops and create a pile of unplanned work.

7. Longer lead & response time 

Organizations that spend hours on product ideation instead of starting the actual work with their teams will eventually fall back and accumulate backlogs of tasks. Similarly, longer response times showcase the presence of internal silos that leads to weak collaboration between development and IT operations teams. 

See More: What Is IT Infrastructure? Definition, Building Blocks, and Management Best Practices

Key DevOps Strategies to Test in 2021

A winning DevOps strategy plays a crucial role in determining the success of digital businesses in today’s world. The essence of a promising DevOps strategy stands on seven main pillars: identification of goals and vision, collaboration, automation, paying attention to the needs of end-users, building on the cloud, focusing on monitoring, and tracking metrics. Adopting a DevOps strategy requires tactical thinking, unwavering focus, and a strong commitment to making it work. Let’s understand the eight essential DevOps strategies to adopt for a successful DevOps transformation effort.

1. Infrastructure as a code

Infrastructure-as-a code (IaC) is a powerful methodology to gain automation for your IT infrastructure. IaC looks after everything from provisioning and infrastructure to configuration management to accomplish automation in the IT infrastructure. IaC is no less than a magical solution ready to automatically handle any change or variation that occurs in your stable IT infrastructure. The purpose of IaC is to continue holding your infrastructure in its current state.

2. Microservices architecture 

Traditional application models no longer make the cut in accomplishing the dynamic needs of today’s exponentially fast-paced world. Microservices architecture goes a step further in upgrading your DevOps journey. This architecture works as a collection of services whose modularity lets your teams work together simultaneously without disturbing each other or coming in each other’s way. Microservices make monitoring, testing, and overall maintenance an easy affair. 

3. Container management system 

Containerization is the new buzzword in the DevOps release strategy and is witnessing a steep rise in popularity. Docker and Kubernetes are famous container tools gaining significant attention due to their various useful features. Containerization is a modern solution that allows independent scaling, operating, and deploying applications from the platform or operating system (OS).

4. Security + DevOps = DevSecOps 

Investing time and efforts toward security always pays off. The importance of security in today’s world cannot be stressed enough. Security is also critical when it comes to DevOps. Keeping this in mind, organizations now need to start thinking about DevSecOps to protect their development cycle from vulnerabilities or threats. One approach applied here is assembling a dedicated team to look after security concerns and supervise daily issues. 

5. Continuous integration pipeline 

Organizations need to adopt and apply practices for the continuous workflow, starting from the development to operations. One such practice is continuous integration (CI), meant for carrying out automation in operational development tasks. A few aspects that are a part of continuous integration are configuration management, code quality analysis and reviews, and code packaging. With continuous integration, developers can automate the code and merge the code build frequently. 

CI quickly detects problems in operations, which helps developers resolve bugs quickly without hampering the normal course of operations. Continuous integration enables DevOps teams to save a chunk of their time in the development cycle. A good CI pipeline is the reflection of your codebase and the features being developed for your customers. 

6. Continuous delivery pipeline 

Continuous delivery (CD), a modern software development methodology, is a practice that allows teams to develop and release the best quality software quickly. CD is all about shifting code from a lower environment into the production environment with automation.

CD is an effective delivery strategy that ensures your software is released in the shortest amount of time with the least possible manual intervention. Continuous delivery pipelines focus on the release strategy to build, integrate, test, and release software at high speed and continued frequency. 

7. Test automation strategy 

Establishing a test automation strategy right at the beginning of your project is crucial to implementing DevOps practices. You’re setting yourself up for failure by not having test automation in your project, resulting in a disturbed CI/CD pipeline. Create a process for automated testing of software that runs on targeted environments. Manual testing is not the right solution here as it requires much more time. This will lead to delays in delivery and within the feedback cycle, wherein developers will need time to fix their work or resolve issues. 

There are several ways in which developers can carry out this strategy. For example, developers can automate tests at various levels in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). They can also run unit tests that work faster in detecting errors and solve them as quickly as possible. When performed regularly, creating automated tests becomes an everyday task for the developer. 

8. Faster feedback cycles 

DevOps principles pay a lot of attention to faster deployment along with the integration of agile practices. DevOps as a culture enables rapid feedback cycles between development, IT operations, and testing. Feedback loops redefine the success of a product and are an irreplaceable part of the process. 

Quick feedback results in the high-paced development of great products and improves the process to a large extent. Feedback plays an important role in shaping products as developers become extra aware and have a keen eye for even minute errors to fix them on the go. This, in turn, benefits organizations in decreasing the overall turnaround time for a product’s release. 

Also Read: What Is Container Security? Definition, Components, Best Practices, and Software

DevOps Adoption Strategy & Toolchain

Organizations adopting DevOps cannot simply focus on either practices or tools for successful implementation. Changes are required on an organizational and structural level to make it work. The first few steps in the nascent stage of adopting the DevOps model include introducing the right tools and technologies, continuous integration by version control systems, and updating the delivery and deployment processes.

After the smooth execution of the initial steps, cross-functional teams can start collaborating by breaking the siloed walls of development and operations. The final step is where teams can create real value and benefits for customers by using automation in the software development lifecycle. 

Identifying the right toolchain is also an important function for a DevOps strategy to work. There are different tools with multiple options that exist for every step of the DevOps process. Choosing the right tool should be made by considering certain factors such as operating costs, expertise, and your cloud service provider. 

These are the means to adopt an appropriate DevOps strategy. By empowering team members with a wealth of knowledge and the autonomy to automate processes, organizations can focus on achieving their business goals.

Step-by-Step DevOps Implementation Strategy

As we move ahead, we think beyond defining the business value of DevOps strategies and plan the next steps to implement them perfectly. Etching out a well-defined plan is the first step to DevOps success. Let’s look at the step-by-step DevOps implementation strategy.

1. Choose the right cloud service provider 

A secure and robust infrastructure that is always at one’s disposal is a baby step toward the smooth running of an application. As such, the importance of choosing a cloud-based service provider that has all the capabilities of being the perfect match for your application cannot be undermined. From Google Cloud Platform to Microsoft Azure and AWS, you can bank on any of these well-known cloud service providers when it comes to your applications. 

2. Create the software architecture 

Mapping out a well-designed software architecture for your application is as crucial as outlining the right strategy. When you adopt a DevOps strategy as the backbone of your application, it comes with an assurance of leading architectures such as the serverless architecture and microservices model being a support system to your product. How does it matter? The other phases of the software development life cycle flow effortlessly when you have a proper design in place.

Serverless architecture resonates all across cloud-based apps, and, as a result, the only thing you will need to worry about is your code. For this, the cloud provider administers all the resources and services. For example, Azure Functions manages all underlying infrastructure such as the operating system and virtual machines.

However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Another great alternative is the microservices architecture that breaks down big applications into small, feathery-light services, thereby enabling better building, deployment, and maintenance.

Containerizing your application through Docker is also an excellent alternative but often less talked about microservices technique. What this does is isolate your service to ensure that your product is highly cohesive and flexibly coupled at the same time. 

3. Follow the experts’ methodology 

Today, developing software is more than just building a successful product. It is also delivering it as a service. Like any other service, the software also needs multiple assurances, such as security, portability, monitoring, and so on, to ensure it runs seamlessly. Hence, a well-defined methodology is essential. Experts around the globe have adopted these 12 factors in their product development tasks. 

• Software is a dynamic entity, and hence, having a codebase that tracks all the versions and revisions is essential.
• Adopt architecture models and structures that ensure dependencies on isolated and loosely paired systems. 
• Think beyond obtaining information; think of configuration management solutions to uniformly store and manage all the configurations.
• Always remember backing services are no less than attached resources.
• Employ DevOps principles at all separate stages, whether it’s development, deployment, or testing.
• Ensure optimization of all core processes in terms of developing, deploying, and testing mechanisms.
• Port binding is a wonderful option—utilize it to export services on the network. 
• Ensure concurrency by scaling up all the various process models.
• Low operational turnaround time can work wonders for you by maximizing the output.
• Enable similarity in all environments, whether it’s development, testing, production, or support.
• Withhold proper log monitoring and event streams.
• Admin and management tasks should be run and treated as core processes. 

4. Ensure container orchestration

Today, containerization has transformed the way platforms and products function by moving beyond virtualization. When it comes to containerization, Docker is a game-changing tool for your applications. However, implementing Docker makes it imperative to implement an orchestration tool as well. This is exactly where container orchestration systems such as Amazon ECS, EKS, and Kubernetes come into play. These systems enhance the container management experience and aid in other jobs such as monitoring. 

5. Build CI/CD pipelines

A CI/CD pipeline is the building block for your DevOps releasing strategy. Its successful implementation essentially ensures streamlining of building and deployment processes. Consequently, this establishes a rapid software delivery pipeline. A CI/CD pipeline also reduces the manual overload of processes on the product team by automating development, deployment, and testing. 

6. Reply on automation and IaC

Developing infrastructure for your product runs can sometimes end up being a humongous task. It can become especially cumbersome if you have to do it repeatedly in different environments due to even a minuscule modification.

Uniformity and similarity in development, testing, and production environments are absolute essentials. This is where IaC tools such as Terraform come to the rescue. They enable automation in environment provisioning and make your product run experience hassle-free through a significant reduction in infrastructure provisioning time and efforts.

7. Scale it up with compliance and security 

Even the ultimate step-by-step strategy is incomplete without setting up compliance that ensures your code and application are devoid of all security vulnerabilities. Implementation of such principles enables better security in your DevOps process. This is especially true in finance and healthcare industries that require compliance with certifications and proper attestations. This is not just to scale up the success of your project with augmented sellability but also to win the trust of your customers, owing to the credibility of these mandatory regulations. 

8. Support, maintenance, and everything in between

Setting up a strategy, developing a product, and selling it is just winning half the battle. A stellar DevOps strategy is nothing without a resilient support framework in place. It induces trust in customers when well-defined service level agreements (SLAs) and service level objectives (SLOs) are present at the contractual level itself.

Customers often rely on detailed incident response plans with a pre-stated timeline and are integrated with the root cause analyses of their concerns. With a well-set support and maintenance assurance on your end, you can deliver a smooth customer experience within minutes.

See More: What Is DevOps? Definition, Goals, Methodology, and Best Practices

Takeaway

DevOps is and will continue to be the talk of the town for a long time to come. It is, without doubt, a highly advanced software solution that requires a top-down strategic approach for its successful implementation. DevOps strategy is a must-have to aid your business’s transformation efforts, and the sooner you begin, the faster you will get better at it. The strategies mentioned above are the culmination of people, practices, and technology, without which no organization can survive or succeed in today’s world.

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