DevOps is a technology concept and culture designed to enhance the cooperation between IT operation teams and software development.
Before the philosophy was unearthed, software development and operations within the IT team worked in different environments.
Software developers would write codes then pass them over to the operations before moving to the next task.
This meant that operations would bear most of the burden of handling the software without proper guidance from the developers.
The result was often lengthy and unnecessary backlogs, increased time to market, and little trust between the two teams.
Then came DevOps to change the situation and improve the relationships between development and operations for the benefit of customers.
The outcome has been a more streamlined and two-way workflow for efficiency, faster time to market, and high-quality productions.
The collaboration between developers and operations reduced the time wasted on escalations. In that case, more time was dedicated to improve and innovate various products.
Currently, many companies are pushing for DevOps. Industry leaders like Netflix and Amazon have integrated DevOps to enhance the quality and usability of their products.
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Increasing the Efficiency of DevOps Teams
Many companies continue to focus on the most advanced tools and technology. What is surprising is the fact that people have often been ignored in the process.
However, optimum results can only be achieved by finding the right people for the job then integrating the DevOps culture in the company.
This is the way to achieve long-term success. If you want to achieve the efficiency of your DevOps teams, here are some tips:
Retain valuable sources
There is no denying that DevOps teams are valuable and work within a unique set of organizational cultures.
Therefore, it is essential to implement strategies that focus on retaining the current employees instead of looking for ways to recruit new ones.
First, there are additional costs associated with training, integrating resources, and the entire onboarding process. You can eliminate this by identifying talents within the existing workforce to build new DevOps teams.
Accordingly, investing in the right technology and tools, ensuring your management is competent, and improving engagement, are some of the ways to enhance retention.
Build cross-functional teams
The conventional software development environment comprises operations and developers working with different objectives in mind.
The same can be said about incentives and responsibilities. In that case, the two teams do not care about the functions of each other.
For instance, developers would not be bothered by the stability of the systems because that is the work of operations.
Customizing your DevOps team structure to build a cross-functional team with shared objectives, incentives, and responsibilities is the only way to overcome this challenge.
Plan your recruitments
The recruitment process is often challenging since DevOps can neither be categorized as a tool nor technology.
Therefore, it is essential to focus on specific needs. Come up with a recruitment strategy based on statistics, trends, technology, and business needs (e.g. AI resume screening).
The first thing you should focus on when creating a DevOps team structure is soft skills. Ensure you go for creative thinkers, excellent communicators, and team persons.
If you want to implement DevOps, here are seven essential DevOps roles you need to succeed.
DevOps evangelist
There is no denying that many IT organizations are currently exploiting DevOps practices. Accordingly, many more are in the process of evolving to integrate these capabilities.
If your organization is in the process of developing, you need an expert who will spearhead, own and deliver the change required for the implementation of the strategies. That expert is the DevOps evangelist.
DevOps evangelist promotes the benefits of DevOps in many ways. This can be through:
Identifying and quantifying the benefits that accrue from implementing DevOps
Identifying essential roles needed to support delivery
Ensuring buy-ins from development and operations
Spearheading the training of IT teams to ensure they are aware of the changes and have what it takes to contribute to the greater good of the company
From this, it is essential to create a learning culture within the organization to remove the fear of failure.
Security and compliance engineer
The role of the security and compliance engineer is to ensure the security of the DevOps environment.
This person collaborates with the development team to ensure the designs have integrated security features in the CI/CD pipeline.
This role is vital since it enhances data integrity and security throughout every production stage and product lifecycle.
Additionally, the security and compliance engineer ensures strict adherence to regulations and compliance standards.
Some may call it the product stability manager. These people work to ensure proper product management and coordination from development to production.
The release manager takes more of the technical role and focuses on details and stumbling blocks.
In other words, release engineers are responsible for the coordination, integration, and flow through various stages.
These phases may include product development, testing, and deployment. This role ensures continuous delivery or flow.
Additionally, release managers focus on creating and maintaining an end-to-end delivery chain.
Software developer/tester
Software developers are always at the heart of the DevOps company. Under many situations, the term software developer may be used to mean the same thing.
However, the role may increase the scope of responsibilities based on the DevOps environment.
Software developers turn new requirements into codes, test units, deploy them, and monitor how they work.
Within the DevOps framework, software developers and testers do not create codes and hand them over to operations.
They have to work together to ensure smooth transitions and functionalities. This is where the collaboration between development and operations hinges.
The shifting roles and responsibilities of software developers and testers require automated testing to enhance quality.
Therefore, you have to ensure automated testing if you are working on new builds more frequently. This saves time and improves product quality.
Automation architect
DevOps depends on automated systems, necessitating the need for the automation architect role. Others may call it the integration specialist.
The work of an automation architect is to analyze, design, and implement strategies that ensure the continuous deployment of products.
Additionally, he is responsible for ensuring availability throughout the production and pre-production phases.
In other words, this is a comprehensive automation role that focuses on the DevOps tools, system, and related cloud platforms.
This role can become more vital, depending on the DevOps environment. Therefore, it is essential to provide a highly reliable environment that supports automation without many hurdles.
Software development requires the quality assurance function. However, when DevOps is brought into the mix, quality assurance testers are replaced by experience assurance testers.
Experience assurance professionals work to ensure new functions and features are released in a way that enhances user experience.
The role no longer focuses on functionality alone since customers (end users) are the most significant part of the equation. User experience is vital.
Utility technology player
In the traditional setting, IT operations and systems administrations often focus on ensuring the servers run efficiently. In this case, there would be little to no change in machines to ensure optimal functionality.
Accordingly, any cause of interruptions would result from the applications that run on the servers. This scenario would call for the introduction of strict controls on what can run on the servers.
In other words, systems administration would focus on quality assurance and control, frequent updates, and operations documentation.
However, the current DevOps environment requires the operations and administration experts to get involved in more than just controls.
They have to be involved in almost every development stage. DevOps engineers/operations experts are now into sprint planning, resource management, security prioritization, etc.
In a DevOps environment, these seven DevOps roles work collaboratively to enhance efficiency and accountability throughout the organization.
These teams are now more than ever involved in each production level, from development, deployment, and monitoring.
DevOps teams are essential in improving the overall product quality and applications.
This collaboration has also ensured faster time to market, positive customer outcomes, and collaborative development and operations for efficient delivery.
If you want to implement a DevOps model within your organization, the first thing you should focus on is getting buy-ins from both the development and operations teams.
This will help you get started in creating a model that works for your business. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that creating a DevOps team requires organization-specific needs and requirements.
Since what works for one business may not work out for you, you need to prioritize your business requirements and research the best-suit model.
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Jamsheer K, is the Tech Lead at Acodez. With his rich and hands-on experience in various technologies, his writing normally comes from his research and experience in mobile & web application development niche.
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