Why the DEVOPS model is here to stay

The DEVOPS model may seem like just another one of those terms which management gets enamored with every few years but it is much more than that. The DEVOPS model will probably be the main way that development is done going into the future. We are sure that not only will it be the main way to develop software but that it will bleed out into other industries as well and become the main way of designing and developing new products and services. Here are a few reasons why.

DEVOPS enables user-centric products
How many times have you been using software and gotten frustrated and asked “Who the hell made this software?”The answer is “a person who will never use the software”. Bad design almost always comes from developers and designers who don’t really know the use case of the software. DEVOPS involves users in the development phase of the software which allows it to be user-friendly at its core. This is why DEVOPS is so important – it allows the people who will end up utilizing the software make important contributions in its creation and design.

We cannot expect developers to know everything
There is a huge problem in software design and development which DEVOPS solves. Development can only be done by developers. However developers are almost never the end users of the software they are creating. Imagine that you want a software to be made which helps architects design houses and buildings. Who will you hire to build the software? Developers, obviously. Yet at the same time you cannot expect developers to know about architecture as well.

This problem is replicated in pretty much every industry out there. You want software that helps the agriculture industry? Developers don’t know anything about agriculture and agriculture experts don’t know anything about software. The DEVOPS model solves this big problem by enabling the users and developers to work together. If there are any fundamental flaws in the way the software operates they can be eliminated at the design phase before the developers waste their time creating software that is of no use to anyone.

It increases success levels
Due to the reasons discussed above, DEVOPS results in software that works better than ever before. There are many horror stories of companies that spent millions developing software and solutions that their employees could never use properly and they ended up taking a huge loss. DEVOPS ensures that horror stories like this won’t happen. Developers are free to focus on the features that will be the most helpful for users because the users are right there to tell them what they need. There is no guess-work involved and thus there is a much, much lower chance that things will end in failure. DEVOPS isn’t just a new way to work – it is the understanding that the mistakes which happened previously happened because of the information and communication gap between users and developers. The sooner we close this gap the better it will be for all of us.

Understanding DevOps and why it’s important

If you’re a developer, you have probably started to hear the term DevOps being thrown around. If you haven’t, well, you will soon be hearing it around the office. Someone in your upper management will hear about it in a conference somewhere and come back asking his company’s people if they need to consider it. Soon there will a team formulated to discuss implementation of DevOps. What we are saying is, this is the right time to know what DevOps is. We all remember what happened when ‘Agile’ became the most popular model for development. Most people at the beginning had no idea what Agile meant and how they needed to change the way they work.

What exactly is DevOps?
DevOps is a new way of thinking about development and a new way of development itself. There has always been a huge divide between the development team and the operations team. The development team takes complete control of the development. It is their job to design the system, build the system, test the system, and then deliver it to the operations team. The operations team receives the fully developed and quality tested product and learns how to use it. Then the operations team uses it for their work and reports any errors of mistakes that pop up to the development team.

DevOps, as the name suggests, is the combination of development and operations. DevOps is based on the understanding that in order to build the most efficient systems it is important to involve the operations people in the development cycle. Too many of us have used software and wondered why it was designed so badly or why we had to work so hard to mold our work according to it. This disconnect between what the users need and what the product delivers has long been a problem in the industry. DevOps is a way of working that understands that while operations cannot develop, developers cannot develop the right thing either without the right inputs.

A very different development cycle
In DevOps, the operations team doesn’t move in once the development is complete. Instead, they are there from the start. They help design the system, they even help in development, they help in quality assurance and much more. The advantages of these are obvious; the product that is build is exactly what is needed to work at the highest efficiency in real world scenarios.

There’s also another huge advantage – the operations team is also much better at utilizing the product. Digital solutions are only useful if the users know how to use the powerful toolset they offer. By including the operations team right from the start they gain a deep understanding of how everything works and allows them to exploit the solution to their full potential. Instead of waiting to be trained after the solution has been developed, they see it being developed and develop an understanding not just of the UI but the underlying infrastructure as well. DevOps is the future because it results in the best development and deployment.

Periodic Table of DEVOPS Tools

https://xebialabs.com/periodic-table-of-devops-tools/