An overview of DevOps

Now, we know that DevOps is a contraction of DEVelopment and OPerationS. DevOps is the end-to-end life cycle of a product and is built based on a focus on business needs and shared goals within the organizations.

DevOps = Continuous Delivery + Continuous Integration + Continuous testing + Continuous Deployment

In traditional software development, a product/project has different phases of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). We will not go into too much detail about all the phases but it has phases such as development, integration, and implementation all the way to operation and maintenance. All the phases are siloed and the cycle is expensive and slow. One more problem is that if a client need changes during the development phase, it means you are delivering software that doesn't contain changes, or you need to start the process midway, which will take more time and money.

The Agile model helps to develop software by small iterations, and will adapt client changes better than the Waterfall model, thus helping to save time and money.

However, with the Agile approach, there is a lack of collaboration between the Dev team and the Ops team that slows down the development and release process. The DevOps methodology provides better collaboration, fast and continuous software delivery, with faster problem resolution and fewer problems to fix.

DevOps brings more flexibility with Continuous Delivery, CI, and the CD pipeline. It helps to provide a more automated release and fewer failures with customer needs, using effective tools and transparency. 

People have some common misconceptions about DevOps such as:

• Is DevOps a new thing?: No. DevOps is not a new thing. It is an extension of the Agile model. Agile's concept was to embrace constant development changes. So, the DevOps concept is to embed those development changes within the operations process.
• Is DevOps a product?: No. DevOps it not a product. It is about the quality of your project/product or application.
• Is DevOps a fad?: No. Organizations that are adopting DevOps are deploying their code 30 times more frequently with 50% less failure for a new release. We cannot ignore this and that is the reason that DevOps is not fading and it will stay. Many companies are already using the DevOps approach or they have started to do so.
• Is DevOps a tool?: No. It is not a tool. It will help to connect or interact with other tools. It will help to drive your organization's goals and interact in such a way that it will help to establish transparency and improved communication throughout the process, within your organizations.