So, we all want better and faster – in other words, give it to me yesterday. In the software development, integration, and deployment space, this has never been truer. Gone are the monolithic software releases eighteen months in the making. The industry has pivoted to a more integrated loop that dove tails nicely with agile development approaches, such as Scrum. DevOps was born out of the need to quickly deliver software, that works, to match customer and market demands.
DevOps is more than just an attempt at efficiency, but it is a change in culture. No longer are development, testing, deployment operating in silos, not interested in the requirements of the other. Traditionally development did the coding, threw it over the wall to the tester, the tester threw it over the wall to the deployment team, each washing their hands when their piece of the puzzle was done. Of course, the customer was left with how I install and run this thing, as documentation wasn’t included in the process.
The cultural change is breaking down the silos and understanding the requirements of all the players in the process. None of the tasks are taken out of the loop but integrated with each other. There are tools that help solve the technology hurdles to support the cultural change. These tools are used to leverage the quality and integration of the process touch points. For example, when coding is complete and checked in, automated testing is kicked off to do validation, whether its API testing, functional testing, or other validations. This can be used as a quality gate before it lands on the desk of a software tester.
The over all concept of DevOps is easy to understand and the need for it is an easy sell. Implementation is another story. Questions of which parts does the organization touch first? How does the organization get everyone to play nicely with each other? How much is it going to cost? There is no one blueprint or model.
What was your experience like? How long did it take to turn the ship? What lessons did you learn?