What is DevOps? A Quick Guide to Understanding Developer Operations

Originally published on: https://www.victory-tuduo.dev/blog/a-quick-guide-to-devops

As a web developer, I have always been intrigued by what processes drive successful project ideas from start to fruition. If you’ve ever been on a personal or team collaboration idea, you may have faced issues such as slow-paced development, conflicts with interests and code contributions, incohesive results as a result of poor team communication, etc.

All these issues at different levels of complexities in your project development, can hamper your progress and put it on the 🐌 slow track. How can we best automate these processes, and scale applications easier and faster while still building high-performing software that can handle user server load, incorporate new features, and also detect and fix bugs without breaking everything 💭?
Well, luckily for us, this is no longer rocket science; this brings us to the practice of Developer Operations which will be covered in this article.

What is DevOps?

The scope of DevOps is quite broad and can be defined in different ways. DevOps at a glance can be seen as an intersection of the activities involved in development and operations. It is an approach to the activities of software development that uses a series of practices to effectively manage collaboration and communication between members of your development & operations team, to create a streamlined software development process.
DevOps aims to create fast-paced software delivery with high-quality code, quick responses to consumer requirements, produce software that can run effectively in different environments with no server downtime, and an automated CI/CD process for feature improvements and bug fixes.

NOTE
The concept of SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle and CI/CD will be properly introduced in the next section.

DevOps can also be defined as a combination of practices, cultural philosophy, communication techniques, and tools, with the aim of boosting an organization’s capability to build, test and deliver high-performing software, with automated improvement processes to better meet customers' ever-growing desires.
Awesome isn’t it? With DevOps you can spend more time on innovation and improvements as your team will have streamlined processes for different stages of both the pre-development and post-deployment stages. No more annoying roadblocks caused by ineffective communication and development cycles. 🥳

Why DevOps?

In the introductory paragraph of this article, we mentioned some issues that may arise during the software development process and hinted at “Developer Operations” being a means to tackle these issues. In this section, we will discuss the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), the challenges DevOps aims to solve and how it tackles them, and finally, the process of CI/CD.

What is SDLC?
Software Development Life Cycle is a representation of the stages involved in the development of software applications, from the conception of the idea to the development and delivery of the software and possible maintenance/updates.
A diagrammatic representation of an SDLC in a DevOps scenario can be seen below:

With DevOps, there’s an endless cycle 🔄 of improvements made to the software. It aims at automating this process while allowing for flexibility, quality assurance, and faster release cycles.

Challenges DevOps Aims to Solve
In a typical release process, some challenges may occur that hamper development. DevOps makes use of tools and behavioral approaches to solve these issues.

• Miscommunication: Poor communication between members of the team will both slowdown application development and produce faulty software. Bad communication can occur in the following scenarios: improper guides/documentation and clear-cut checklists dictating the features currently being developed and the next steps in the development cycle. DevOps provides sensitization on the benefits of good communication and provides a streamlined process to effectively manage collaboration between team members.
• Continuous adaptation to ever-changing landscape (tools and new technologies): To ensure optimal development cycles, DevOps practices involve establishing a standard toolset for application development and ensuring developers make use of best practices when contributing.
• Resistance to change: Some team members might find it hard to adapt to new practices, handle feature improvements and make use of the toolsets. With DevOps, training, workshops, and cultural training can be undertaken to make team members more flexible. Also, rotations and incentives can be incorporated to encourage team members to perform better, and with rotation practices, employees are not left drained/stressed out as issues can be delegated to the right set of people seamlessly.

CI/CD
CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) is a set of practices and methodologies incorporated in DevOps to automate the software development process, ensure continuous software delivery, and streamline testing, maintenance, and deployment of the application.

Continuous Integration is the practice of frequently shipping new changes/fixes to the software repository, building and testing the code to ensure smooth integration and stable/reliable software.
Continuous Deployment is the process of creating an automated software delivery process for newer versions of the software to the production environment. This is carried out after the software has been properly tested during Continuous Integration thereby ensuring quality assurance of the deployed software.
CI/CD uses practices such as software versioning, building and testing automation, and deployment pipelines. A CI/CD cycle will consist of a continuous sequence of planning, coding, building, continuous testing, release, deployment, and monitoring operations (getting feedback, shipping features, and improvements).

In essence, the practice of Developer Operations helps to ensure the following:

• Faster-paced software delivery.
• Better problem remediation system.
• Ensure software development follows best practices and software is of high quality.
• Improved communication and collaboration networks.
• Provides more opportunities for development and innovation, and reduces time spent on fixing and maintaining software.

Opportunities in DevOps

DevOps initially started as simply a set of practices in software development, but over time has evolved into a separate role filled by an employee with the job of a DevOps engineer. The DevOps engineering role may be part of development, operations, or maybe a separate role of its own. The opportunities available in the DevOps space include the following:

• DevOps engineer: These set of people are responsible for designing, implementing, and overseeing the practices associated with DevOps within the organization. They are software developers, with a key understanding of the tools and operations necessary to build automated pipelines for effective software delivery.

• Developer Advocacy: While this role is not limited to DevOps, its activities are close to the practices and culture of DevOps. Developer advocates are charged with the responsibilities of working hand-in-hand with the development teams to ensure effective communication and ensure guidance/support when building and deploying software.
  Developer advocacy also involves creating technical content such as tutorials, use cases, and sample codes for a particular product/technology to educate developers. They also carry out the task of promoting these contents on technical communities and social media platforms to better inform the public on the capabilities of the product, and in doing so make the product easily understandable, while also informing to-be users of its existence.
  The roles of developer advocates may differ from one organization to another, but in essence, a developer advocate possesses good communication skills, a strong technical background, and a passion for working with development teams and promoting content.

• Kubernetes Engineer: The Kubernetes engineer role is concerned with managing and deploying the software in a container-based environment. Kubernetes is an open-source platform that is used to create an automated deployment, scaling, and management system for orchestrated containerized applications.
  Engineers in this role are responsible for designing and implementing Kubernetes clusters, configuring and managing containerized applications, and automating deployment and scaling processes. They also monitor and troubleshoot issues related to Kubernetes and the underlying infrastructure.
  A Kubernetes engineer may also work closely with developers and operations teams to ensure that containerized applications are optimized for Kubernetes deployment and that DevOps practices are integrated into the development process.

• Release Manager: As the name implies, developers in this role are responsible for handling software versioning; coordinating and managing the release of software updates, patches, and new features to the deployed application. They also work together with the development and operations teams to ensure the software is shipped timely with the desired features and no issues in production.

• Cloud Architect: Cloud architects are responsible for developing and managing cloud-based implementations of the software, which are secure, scalable, and cost-effective. They work with the developer and operations team to ensure the software is optimized for deployment on the cloud environment.

• Automation Engineer: Automation engineers are tasked with the process of creating, maintaining, and testing automated scripts for automatic software testing, deployment, and maintenance.

Conclusion

Congratulations on making it to the end of this article. With this, you now have a basic understanding of the role of Developer Operations and its benefits to the software delivery process.

NOTE
For further study, check out the following resources:
Evolution of DevOps
Understanding the CI/CD pipeline
Automation in DevOps