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Veritis

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at dev.to

A Guide to DevOps Transformation and DevOps Best Practices

The digital trend has taught the companies to think advanced to meet the dynamically changing customer needs and deliver the best experiences.

And, DevOps has been at the forefront in driving organizational abilities to catch up to the digital speed.

Despite many advantages it offers to SDLC, DevOps adoption is yet to reach its full potential due to various reasons.

One of them is misunderstanding or misinterpretation of core DevOps practices by most organizations.

While some of them have adopted and did not see the desired results or remained unsuccessful.

Understanding core DevOps practices is crucial for DevOps transformation and achieving the desired success in the DevOps journey.

Here, we bring to you the 6 steps to DevOps transformation and the best practices that can promise you the desired success!

6 Steps To DevOps Transformation

The following 6 steps lead you to successful DevOps transformation:

1) Organizational Preparedness

This ideally begins with finalizing critical stakeholders involved in the DevOps journey, with leaders at all levels of hierarchy. Dev, Ops, Security, and core business teams will be part of the main process, alongside the technical team. With well-planned process design and effective planning, form the basics of your DevOps journey. Experienced personnel and subject matter experts will be of great help in streamlining the process.

2) Center of Excellence

One of the senior executives should lead the Centre of Excellence (CoE) in the DevOps journey, backed by representatives from delivery teams and vendor organizations. With support from the subject matter expertise or an external consulting partner can bring the transition in 24 months.

3) Governance

This is led by the streamlined communication strategy and process enablement, leading to the formation of a set of DevOps KPIs. Governance principles for cultural transformation and driving core DevOps practices are also set in this step. Moreover, DevOps practitioners are guided on roles and responsibilities, while teams are empowered with a collaborative culture.

4) Process In-Take

This step paves the way to realizing DevOps goals by means of team workshops and awareness programs guided by subject matter experts. This phase will also help make an appropriate choice of DevOps tools and resources, followed by process evaluation.

5) Trial Process

This is where you test what you did so far. Identify the applications and functional areas to apply the new DevOps practices and make scalable arrangements for the changing needs. This is an end-to-end process, as a trial run, with the involvement of toolset, skilled personnel, manual and automated processes.

6) Roll Out DevOps Program

Learn from the pilot project and make necessary improvements, if required, in the main process. Go for multiple releases, for improved scalability, across different platforms. Don’t forget to ensure a proper feedback mechanism as the main process will be a continuous chain.

These six steps help you to get onto the process of DevOps transformation in the right way. While the following set of right practices makes your journey more comfortable and successful.

DevOps Best Practices To Go By

• No Communication Gaps

Make sure there are no communication gaps anywhere cross-functionally, especially among core DevOps teams. Let the teams be aligned to core business objectives. Break the siloes and large teams into smaller ones for a speedy delivery.

• Continuous Feedback Mechanism
Also described as a user-centric approach, a continuous feedback mechanism keeps you abreast of the user demands and gives the ability to address their requirements on demand. This helps you in continuous development and testing and automate repetitive tasks.

• Perfect Tools and Resources

Right toolset and resource planning are key to DevOps success, which happens through seamless delivery and enhanced productivity. Collaboration, API integration, reporting and monitoring are some crucial areas where you need a perfect toolset.

• Performance Monitoring

Performance monitoring and subsequent optimization are crucial to DevOps success. Deployment time, failure and recovery rate, and Mean Time to Repair (MTR) are three significant areas that require performance monitoring.

Automated tracking of core metrics and addressing recurring issues are crucial aspects of performance monitoring.

These are some of the various other practices that can make your DevOps journey a grand success.

In Conclusion

If implemented properly, DevOps provides you a wide range of business benefits, including:

• Digital Transformation

• Resource Utilization

• Minimized Time to Market

• Streamlined IT

• Cultural Transformation

• Enhanced Communication

• Improved Collaboration

What are you waiting for? Get on to the transformative DevOps culture and gain a competitive edge.

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