We live in a world that is highly competitive and fast-paced. We commonly encounter firms putting a greater emphasis on fast software delivery in order to fulfill market demands. However, it’s critical that the software’s quality isn’t jeopardized in the process. As a result, we’re seeing firms adopt software development approaches like DevOps, which provide faster software and help preserve the end product’s quality. This blog will discuss why DevOps is vital and how organizations may embrace the DevOps culture.
This blog’s key points are as follows:
- The significance of DevOps
- Agile and DevOps: What’s the Connection?
- How to create a DevOps culture in your company?
- How can you become an Azure Certified DevOps Engineer?
Let’s start by outlining the developer team’s role.
The significance of DevOps
Let’s look at how developers and operational processes contribute to the software development lifecycle to have a better understanding of what DevOps is.
Let’s begin by defining the role of developer teams.
They are in charge of taking care of the following while building software:
- Execution of Code
- Features of the software
- Updates to the security system
- Error corrections
As a developer, you must also consider ‘time to market.’ Due to time restrictions, a developer may be forced to align activities such as
- Code which is still being worked on
- Brand-new products
- Brand-new features
When all of these restrictions are met, and the product is ready to go into production, it may exhibit faults since the code written in the development environment may not work the same way in the production environment.
Let’s examine how the operations teams see things
The operations team is in charge of maintaining the software updates in the production environment. With the increasing growth of software development needs, IT administrators and operators are compelled to manage multiple servers at the same time.
The existing tools and older software may not be sufficient to handle various servers at the same time. Minor code fixes should be made by the operations team to ensure that the code works as well in production as it did in development. Finally, to avoid any delays, these deployments must be scheduled on time.
This is not the end of their responsibilities. As the code is deployed, the operations team must deal with code modifications and, if necessary, correct errors. It may appear that developers have delegated their responsibilities to operations at times.
This is where juggling takes place, as both teams believe the other is imposing their responsibilities on them.
Organizations may miss out on opportunities due to the amount of time spent in these conversations.
- Software tests are made mandatory.
- Lack of transparency and late feedback
- Bug fixes that have been delayed
If these two teams can find a way to collaborate, it will be a huge success.
- may break down team divisions
- share responsibility
- begin functioning as a group
DevOps enters the scene at this point. Simply said, DevOps is a process that brings together developer and operations teams to assure continuous integration, development, and deployment of software in order to fulfill the growing need for faster product releases while retaining software quality.
Now that we’ve established what DevOps is let’s go on to understanding another approach called Agile and seeing how it compares to DevOps in this ‘creating DevOps culture for your firm’ blog.
Agile and DevOps: What’s the Connection?
To begin with, Agile and DevOps are both software development approaches with similar goals. The goal is to get the finished product out as soon as possible, and many businesses get confused about which option to go with, and they even wonder whether these approaches can be combined in some cases. Let’s look at the benefits, similarities, and distinctions between the two.
DevOps combines two separate siloed teams for faster product deliveries. On the other hand, Agile emphasizes working in small groups to respond fast to changing consumer and market demands.
DevOps focuses on hyper-releases that can occur many times per day. On the other hand, Agile leverages a sprint approach to manage a much more fixed timeline, which can last anywhere from a week to months.
Agile and DevOps can also collaborate. DevOps takes care of Continuous Integration and Deployment to enable quick release cycles, whereas Agile allows you to address changes in requirements and establish improved collaboration across smaller teams. They can cut manufacturing time and concentrate more on customer needs by working together.
This is not to claim they are without flaws. Both DevOps and Agile are accountable for the significant cultural shift. To make DevOps work, you’ll need two different siloed teams to collaborate and develop a connection. On the other hand, Agile necessitates a departure from the traditional static and strict work environment.
In larger organizations, these issues become more obvious. If a company is large enough, it is likely to develop a culture in which separate teams have specified departmental goals and, as a result, have the habit of focusing on tasks that help them achieve goals that are specific to them. This is where organizations must make space for both methods and set aside time for the paradigm shift.
Agile also has issues with large teams, but DevOps deployment necessitates precision or can cause a slew of issues for businesses.
However, organizations can still use these approaches separately or in combination to gain the benefits of implementation.
Let’s move on to the next section of this DevOps blog, where we’ll look at how to create a DevOps culture in your company.
How to create a DevOps culture in your organization?
Roles and Responsibility
Everyone in your company, whether a junior developer or a stakeholder, must support the cultural shift in order to establish a successful DevOps culture. Individuals must be informed about who will be in charge of particular responsibilities. Simultaneously, you must identify ways to eliminate compartmentalized problem-solving approaches.
Understand Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD)
In order to develop a good DevOps work culture, you must have a comprehensive understanding of CI/CD. It provides the required tools for your development teams to manage application deployments between development to production.
You should assess your current company procedures and objectives. This will help you discover inefficiencies or flaws in your software development and deployment procedure, as well as the implementation of essential adjustments to optimize the software delivery pipeline.
Automation
It is critical to automate as many operations as possible. Manual labor is not only inconvenient, but it also wastes time, money, effort, and resources. The above concerns can be resolved promptly by automating critical operations, and you can guarantee more error-free procedures. Simultaneously, your resources can be put to better use by making more significant contributions.
Pre-mortem examinations
It is critical to conduct a deep analysis of problems. You should be able to predict dangers so that you can address them while there is still time! It’s important that your staff understands the relevance of Pre-Mortems and how they can help your company prevent bugs.
Retrospectives
This is a well-known and widely used agile approach for building a culture of continuous learning and improvement. Retrospectives provide a secure environment where you may discuss what is and is not working for you and what needs to be changed at the same time. As a result, your team must aim to hold these retrospectives regularly.
Every company should strive for a highly collaborative, problem-solving, and flexible culture.
How can you become an Azure Certified DevOps Engineer?
We’ve established the importance and popularity of DevOps as a methodology and a talent. Microsoft Azure is a well-known cloud service provider that many businesses have begun to use. As a result, integrating your DevOps and Cloud Computing abilities for a platform like Microsoft Azure will help you advance in your profession. It’s no surprise that many people are pursuing Microsoft certifications such as Azure DevOps certification to advance their careers. If you’re one of these hopefuls, follow these steps to get started.
Plan your certification
Start by defining your current position in your journey. Check out the official page to learn more about the certification and to make notes of key facts about what needs to be covered. Make yourself a deadline so that you can plan ahead. Please note that Azure offers a variety of certifications; for the DevOps role, you should take the Azure Developer or Administrator path, which goes to the Azure DevOps Expert Certification. The Azure DevOps certification path is depicted in the graphic below.
What should you study?
When it comes to starting a new career path, it’s common to be confused about where to begin. The steps below will assist you in simplifying the process:
- Learn the fundamentals of cloud computing and DevOps to get started.
- Sign up for a free Azure tier account and begin exploring the services it provides.
- Azure provides essential cloud services, including computing, monitoring, storage, security, and databases. Begin to learn them.
- Spend time learning about the essential Azure DevOps services and how to leverage them into your DevOps strategies.
- For a developer position, you should be familiar with Linux foundations and be proficient in at least one programming language, such as Java or Python.
- Begin engaging in the free projects and practise labs provided on the official documentation at the same time.
- Join the Azure forums and check through the dumps and topics discussed there.
- Take advantage of free resources like the official documentation, YouTube playlists, and quite detailed.
- Finally, learn how the Azure Certification exams work and begin taking practice exams.
Time to Invest
The time is dependent on an individual’s learning curve, although it should be taken cautiously:
- 1 hr per day, 2-3 Weeks – The Basics of Cloud Computing
- 1 hr per day, 2-3 Weeks – Fundamentals of DevOps
- Subjective to one’s learning curve – Fundamentals of Programming
- 2-3 hrs per day, 8-12 Weeks – Hands-on Azure Fundamentals
- 1-2 hrs per day, 3-4 Weeks – Projects and Mocks
If you’re unsure and need assistance organising your study materials, consider Microtek Learning’s Azure Certified DevOps Engineer Training for a more structured and learning-oriented approach.
Let’s conclude this blog post on developing a DevOps culture in your company.