What is DevOps?

DevOps involves collaboration between the software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) teams. These teams must work together for processes and shortening the systems development lifecycle.

Through communication and collaboration, DevOps involves: 

• Task automation
• Implementing customer feedback
• Identifying room for improvement in product lifecycles

Since DevOps incorporates both team’s tasks, it can impact communication.

No – but they do have similar goals. 

The DevOps methodology is about collaboration between development and operations teams to automate and streamline software development. Agile, on the other hand, is about responding to evolving needs and incorporating customer feedback. 

Iterative development is also part of agile. Despite differing in focus and implementation, agile and DevOps both require collaboration.

These two teams should work together seamlessly for the sake of shared responsibility across the development lifecycle. This involves deployment, incident response, automated testing, and monitoring. DevOps is vital for innovation and to ensure that customers’ needs are met with better features, but there are challenges involved. 

Potential challenges to address involve fears of conflict within teams and trust. Communication also needs to be addressed appropriately if DevOps is to be successful. 

The pros and cons of automation in DevOps are listed below. 

Advantages of Automation in DevOps 

• Efficiency: Teams use automation to streamline repetitive tasks. If this is done correctly, development teams can focus on strategic initiatives.

• Delivery: Faster iterations and less time between feedback loops should result in a product going to market sooner, though you need to address internal challenges for this to happen.
• Error Reduction: Human error is limited with automation, impacting app quality and resulting in fewer technical issues – but humans are still needed in the process if things go wrong. 
• Productivity: Teams should allocate more energy to important tasks. 
• Costs: After freeing up infrastructure and labor costs, businesses may have more space for innovation; however, these funds must be spent wisely.
• Schaalbaarheid: Growth and innovation may be influenced by automation and whether organizations can scale DevOps accordingly.

Possible DevOps Drawbacks

• Investment: You need to make an upfront investment in both technology and experienced personnel.
• Displacement: It’s important that your automation doesn’t result in workforce-related challenges (e.g. some roles potentially being displaced). 
• Over-Reliance: Automation is a powerful tool, but over-reliance can make you less adaptable, flexible, and innovative.
• Beveiliging: Due to the potential security risks that automation can cause, you must implement strong security measures.
• Technical Expertise: Think about whether your staff need extra training, or you need new hires; automation’s implementation and maintenance requires specialized technical knowledge.

To implement DevOps, consider each of the following. 

1. You’ll need to understand DevOps’ principles before realizing the benefits. Principles include a collaborative and communicative culture, process automation, and avoiding development and operational silos. 
2. Analyze your current IT infrastructure. Where can you implement DevOps based on this? For example, you might need to utilize new tools/tech (e.g. continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines). Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and containerization might also be necessary; start small and build over the long run. 
3. Start with a pilot test. After testing processes/tools, you should become more experienced. When that happens, consider using DevOps in other parts of the organization.

Voorbeeld: 

Netflix used a microservices architecture and CI/CD pipelines to implement DevOps; the streaming service also automated infrastructure provisioning, though none of this happened overnight. As a result, they could:

• Release new features and updates
• React to customer requests 
• Finetune app performance 

Remember that DevOps is an ongoing journey.