What is DevOps - With Definition, Lifecycle, Tools, and Engineers

Introduction

The software development industry is scaling at new heights each day, especially with the adoption of DevOps. According to a research report from Statista, 80% of the respondents consider DevOps extremely important for software development.

Even though DevOps continues to dominate software development, there is still confusion about what exactly DevOps means. Is DevOps a process, or a culture, an approach, a methodology, or an amalgamation of all these things? In whichever way you give the DevOps definition, it represents a journey. And no matter whether you are a beginner, intermediate, or an expert in DevOps, we are here to solve your queries, such as:

• What is DevOps?
• How DevOps works?
• What is DevOps Lifecycle?
• What are the Benefits of DevOps for you?
• What are DevOps Tools and DevOps Toolchain?
• Which are the best DevOps practices?
• What is DevSecOps, and how does it relate to DevOps?
• Who is a DevOps engineer, and what are DevOps engineer skills, roles and responsibilities?

What is DevOps?

As the name suggests, DevOps is a combined approach of Software Development (Dev) and IT Operations (Ops). Thus, DevOps is a union of technology, people, and processes to deliver continuous value to the customers. Notably, DevOps is not a specific technology, framework, or set of standards. DevOps users embrace it as a ‘DevOps Culture’ or sometimes as ‘DevOps Environment.’ It promotes better communication and collaboration between the teams.

Let us understand the technical definition of DevOps.

DevOps Definition

In technical terms, the DevOps definition can be given as :

DevOps is a combination of cultural philosophy, set of practices, and tools that integrate and automate between software development and IT operations team. It emphasizes rapid software development by team empowerment, cross-functional collaboration, simplified communication, and technology automation.

Whereas, the scientists from CSIRO and SEI define DevOps as:

DevOps is a set of practices to reduce the turnaround time from committing a change to a system and implementing that change into a production environment while maintaining high quality.

In simple interpretation, DevOps is defined as the adoption of an iterative and continuous software development approach, automation, and maintenance. To understand DevOps, you need to know where it came from? Or what’s the History of DevOps? Here is a quick intro of how we got the DevOps.

History Of DevOps

Until 2000, software was built, deployed, and updated using the waterfall model. It is a linear approach to large-scale development. So, software development teams would spend months of time developing the code. And spent several other months integrating the code. Next, the testing and QA team would spend more time on testing the code. This results in huge risks and an enormous amount of time to go live.

To speed up the development process and quality, development teams started using an iterative approach. This iterative approach was known as Agile Software Development or Agile Methodology. These agile practices were more efficient till 2007. After that, software development communities raised a concern that they feel a fatal level of dysfunction.

To overcome all the dysfunctions, Flickr engineers John Allspaw and Paul Hammond represented their own DevOps-like methodology at a conference in 2009. Their title stated, “ 10+ Deploys per Day: Dev and Ops Cooperation at Flickr “. The same year, a software consultant named Patrick Debois organized the first DevOps Day in Belgium. The hashtag ‘#DevOps’ was used, and then more DevOps Days were held worldwide. Thus, the term DevOps came into existence.

Learn More About → The History of DevOps 

Let us move further and understand how DevOps works through the DevOps Lifecycle.

How DevOps works: The complete DevOps Lifecycle

In DevOps Model, the development and operation teams are not isolated. They work together as a single team through the entire DevOps Lifecycle. From development, implementation, testing to operations, they are not limited to any single function. Whereas, in some units, quality assurance and security are also part of the DevOps Lifecycle. The involvement of the security team in the DevOps lifecycle is sometimes referred to as DevSecOps.

This DevOps team automates the processes that were handled manually. They also utilize modern technology stacks and tools to operate quickly and reliably. DevOps teams have tools for each phase of the DevOps Lifecycle. These tools help DevOps engineers accomplish their tasks independently without utilizing more resources. This is how DevOps works.

Knowing DevOps is incomplete without understanding the DevOps Lifecycle, So here is a quick definition of DevOps Lifecycle:

DevOps Lifecycle is nothing but a set of iterative, automated, and continuous development processes designed for rapid software development process while maintaining high quality.

A standard DevOps Lifecycle consists of 7 phases. Here are they

1. Continuous Development
2. Continuous Integration
3. Continuous Testing
4. Continuous Monitoring
5. Continuous Feedback
6. Continuous Deployment
7. Continuous Operations

These 7 phases of DevOps lifecycle are continuous, iterative, and allow improvement throughout the software development process. Let us dive deep into each step to understand the DevOps lifecycle in a better way.

1. Continuous Development

Continuous Development is the first and foremost phase of the DevOps lifecycle. In this phase, planning and coding of the software take place. The version of the project is also decided during the planning. At the same time, software developers write the code for applications. The planning does not require any primary tools, but there are certain tools for maintaining the code. While developing a source code begins by choosing a development language. Python, C, C++, Ruby, and JavaScript are some of the DevOps most popularly used languages.

I. What is Continuous Development in DevOps

Continuous development in DevOps began like an agile software development methodology. Instead of developing software as a whole, updates are done in a continuous flow in a large batch. Software is developed piece by piece to deliver it to clients as soon as it gets tested.

Continuous development offers enormous benefits such as:

• Improved end software quality
• Easier updation of changes
• Quickly fixing of bugs and errors
• Manage overall project risk
• Improve productivity
• Save time and resources

Learn More About → Continuous Development

2. Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration, generally known as CI, is one of the most important phases of DevOps Lifecycle. Continuous integration is a software development practice where developers need to commit frequent changes to the source code. The changes occur daily or at a gap of a few days . The code is compiled and goes through unit testing, integration testing, packaging, and code review. Thus, the code with new functionalities is continuously integrated with the existing source code.

I. What is Continuous Development in DevOps

Continuous Integration (CI) is a DevOps practice to automate the integration of changes in code from multiple developers into a single repository. After the integration, automated tests and builds are run. Here, automated tools are used to check the builds and codes before the integration. The main goal of Continuous Integration (CI) is to assure quality software, reduce validation and new software update time.

II. Continuous Integration Process

In the continuous integration process, developers frequently update to a shared repository. Before each update, developers may sometimes run a local unit test just to verify code before integration. Whereas continuous integration service automatically builds and runs unit tests on the updated code to check the errors.

Generally, the continuous integration process consists of 4 significant steps. These steps are:

1. Source Control (Commit Change)
2. Build (Run Build And Unit Tests)
3. Staging (Deploy To Test Environment And Run Tests)
4. Production (Deploy To Production Environment)

Continuous Integration is the most important phase of DevOps lifecycle and has many benefits to offer. Here are the top benefits of continuous integration.

III. Benefits of Continuous Integration

Here is the list of benefits offered by continuous integration

• CI can find bugs and errors quicker through frequent testing.
• Continuous Integration delivers updates at a more frequent rate to the customers.
• Reduce last-minute chaos and risk of the project.
• CI helps organizations to scale better and quicker.
• It improves the feedback loop by providing faster feedback for business decisions.
• CI improves overall accountability and communication between the teams.

To leverage all the benefits of continuous integration, you must implement its best practices. Here are some continuous integration best practices.

IV. Continuous Integration best practices

For best results, continuous integration relies on these best practices:

• Maintaining the code repository
• Automating the build
• Test-driven development
• Implementation of code request and review
• Optimizing the pipeline speed
• Test in a clone of a production environment
• Maintain high transparency in the process
• Automate the deployment

Learn More About → Continuous Integration

3. Continuous Testing

Continuous Testing can be repositioned anywhere around the continuous integration phase in the DevOps lifecycle. Some organizations place it before continuous integration, while most place it after integration.

In the continuous testing phase, the developed software is continuously tested for bugs. A test environment is created with the help of Docker and Containers. Automated tests are run, and reports are generated for the test evaluation process. This process saves a lot of time and manual effort. Also, analyzing the failed test cases becomes easy. At last, a UAT (User Acceptance Testing) is done, and the software is bug-free and ready to move to the next phase of DevOps lifecycle.

I. What is Continuous Testing in DevOps

Continuous Testing in DevOps is a process of executing automated tests at every phase of DevOps lifecycle. It is part of a continuous software delivery pipeline to get immediate feedback on business risks. It involves test automation to speed up software development and delivery.

II. Benefits of Continuous Testing

There are a lot of benefits of continuous testing in Devops. Some of them are as follows:

• Faster, continuous, and reliable feedback
• Minor code changes
• Faster MTTR (Mean Time To Resolution)
• Faster software release
• Early bug and error detection
• Less time needed for code review
• Resource-saving while implementing CI
• Mitigate risk at early stages of development

Learn More About → Continuous Testing

4. Continuous Monitoring

In this phase of DevOps life cycle, we monitor the performance of application. The important and vital information related to the software is recorded here. This information is then used to organize the functionalities of the entire application. Errors such as ‘server not reachable’ or ‘low memory’ are resolved in this phase. Also, the root cause of the issues are found and fixed. Other network-related problems are also taken care of in this phase of DevOps lifecycle.

I. What is Continuous Monitoring in DevOps

Continuous Monitoring in DevOps is a technology and process implemented by the DevOps team to rapidly detect security risks and compliance issues in IT infrastructure. Continuous Monitoring empowers DevSecOps teams with real-time information at each phase of the DevOps pipeline.

Learn More About → Continuous Monitoring

5. Continuous Feedback

The improvements done in continuous monitoring are analyzed here. Developers can gauge the outcome of the final version of the software. The experiences of a software tester and end clients are shared in this phase. As a result, this can be a turning phase of the project in DevOps lifecycle. The feedbacks are addressed, and changes are made accordingly. Once all the changes are implemented, the DevOps team moves forward to release the new version of the software.

I. What is Continuous Feedback in DevOps

Continuous Feedback in DevOps is an approach to provide new applications directly to the line of business. It is not just an end process but a continuous phase in DevOps lifecycle. It manages coordination between teams through development, deployment, and support in IT as well as non-IT functions.

6. Continuous Deployment

Continuous Deployment is a phase where finalized code is deployed to the production servers. The key aspect of the continuous deployment phase is configuration management. It helps to deploy code on all the servers, which creates consistency in the application. Code is released to the server, and updates are scheduled accordingly. Overall, what continuous deployment does is make an application easy to run on different computers.

I. What is Continuous Deployment in DevOps

Continuous Deployment in DevOps is a software release process in which any code that passes the automated testing phase is released into the production environment. These changes are directly reflected to the end software users. Deployment tools can automate the entire deployment process so engineers can focus on other important tasks.

Learn More About → Continuous Deployment

7. Continuous Operations

Continuous Operations is the last and the shortest phase of DevOps lifecycle. The main aim of continuous operations is to automate the release of software and its updates. The development cycle in this phase of DevOps is short, allowing engineers a faster time to market the product.

I. What is Continuous Operations in DevOps

Continuous Operations in DevOps means the operations of data services and applications need to be done continuously without any interruptions. In this phase of DevOps, you need to take care that the availability and performance of an application should not suffer from new updates and releases. There must be no downtime for the application.

Now you know what is DevOps and how it works; let’s understand why people choose devops. More IT organizations are shifting to the DevOps culture, and the reason behind this is the advantages it offers. There are numerous benefits of DevOps for business organizations. Let’s take a look at them one by one.

Benefits of DevOps

When development and operation teams are combined as DevOps, they reduce time, deploy frequently, and develop high-quality software. Organizations that adopt DevOps function in an effective way. DevOps organizations can deliver with speed, innovation, and the latest functionality. DORA’s State Of DevOps Report shows that top DevOps performers deliver code faster, have fewer issues, and solve problems quickly.

Apart from these, there are so many benefits of DevOps. Majorly these benefits can be divided into three categories. Let’s take a look at each of DevOps benefits one by one.

1. Technical Benefits of DevOps

Here are a few technical benefits of DevOps:

I. Rapid Delivery

Teams that practice DevOps deliver software more rapidly while maintaining high software quality. In fact, a DORA report found that the DevOps team deploys 208x more frequently. The continuous delivery phase in DevOps allows teams to build and deliver rapidly through automated tools.

II. Reliability

The DevOps practices such as CI & CD ensure the quality of application update. DevOps also can rely on infrastructure changes and maintain the optimum experience for users.

III. Security

You can integrate the desired level of security in the DevOps lifecycle as DevSecOps is an integrated part of the development process. Security is built into the software and product by integrating active security audits. Moreover, continuous testing and continuous feedback detect the bugs and issues in the early phases of software development.

2. Cultural Benefits of DevOps

Here are a few cultural benefits of DevOps:

I. Improved Collaboration

The main purpose of DevOps is to develop a collaborative culture between the development and operations teams. These teams work in a combined manner and share responsibilities. Not only does DevOps improve collaboration but also makes both teams more efficient.

II. Better manage unplanned work

Unplanned work is an unexceptional reality that every development team faces. It is one of those things that directly affect productivity. DevOps establishes a continuous process with clarity so the development team can manage unplanned work easily. It also helps in managing the planned work without any severe effect on productivity. Thus it is considered as one of the best benefits of DevOps.

III. Happier and Productive work environment

The DevOps process increases the collaboration between the development and operations team. They go hand in hand in each development phase and handle the complex tasks together. Besides the modem day, automated tools assist them in the best possible ways. So the overall productivity and work environment in DevOps is way better than any other software development methodology.

3. Business Benefits of DevOps

Here are a few business benefits of DevOps:

I. Scalability

Scalability is one of the best business benefits of DevOps. By implementing the DevOps culture in your organization and best practices, you can easily scale your business to the next level. All the continuous processes of DevOps benefit you to utilize your resources in a better and smarter way.

II. Faster release

The main processes in DevOps – Automation, Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery, Feedback, and monitoring focus on the faster release of the software.  Thus, DevOps benefits you in building more software projects in less time.

III. More time to innovate

The time saved from faster release and deployment is used in innovating better solutions. As DevOps streamlines the process, it delivers better quality and efficient release. The team gets a free hand and a good scope to be innovative in their work. DevOps also allows solving real-life problems by implementing the combination of the latest technologies, frameworks, and tools.

IV. Minimum production cost

With the collaborative approach, DevOps helps in cutting down the production and management costs to a great extent. Another reason for the cost reduction is that continuous updates and monitoring work parallelly in DevOps, which benefits additional cost savings.

Irrespective of the DevOps benefits mentioned above, there are many several advantages of DevOps. The Benefits of DevOps depend on the project and its requirements.

Learn More About → Benefits Of DevOps

DevOps Tools: creating A DevOps Toolchain

DevOps is not a technology or a singular framework but a cultural practice to be implemented or rather adopted. To follow DevOps culture, you often need to use DevOps tools. So let us understand what is DevOps tooling.

What is DevOps Tools

DevOps tools is an umbrella terminology that collectively includes platforms, tools, applications, and servers of SDLC in the DevOps model. The main aim of DevOps tools is to streamline, automate and shorten the various phases of the software delivery pipeline (SDLC).

These DevOps tools help teams to manage complex environments and keep the DevOps engineers in control of the high velocity of DevOps. Many DevOps tools are used to integrate and collaborate between the operation and development teams.

What is DevOps Toolchain

A DevOps toolchain is a collection of tools from different vendors that operate as an integrated unit to build, design, manage, operate, and measure software systems. DevOps toolchain allows DevOps engineers to collaborate through the development lifecycle.

The DevOps toolchain cares about all the fundamentals of DevOps, such as automation, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and collaboration.

DevOps Tools list according to DevOps Lifecycle

Since DevOps is a culture to adopt, there is no singular tool that enables entire DevOps practices and principles. Instead, you need to create a DevOps tools list for each phase of the DevOps lifecycle. There are different types of DevOps tools. Let’s take a look at the best DevOps tool list.

1. Continuous Deployment Tools

Continuous deployment tools are automated software that make every code pass through the entire delivery pipeline and release it to the production environment. Once the code is tested by the testing team, continuous deployment tools will automatically pass it to the production environment.

There are multiple deployment tools in the market, but the few that stand apart from others and are considered the best deployment tools are:

List of Top Continuous Deployment Tools

• AWS CodeDeploy
• Jenkins
• Octopus Deploy
• TeamCity
• GitLab
• DeployBot

Apart from these, there are several other continuous deployment tools for DevOps as well. The choice depends on several factors and project criteria.

2. Continuous Integration Tools

Continuous Integration (CI) is a process of code testing and build automation, each time there is version control. Continuous Integration tools allow developers to share the source code, make changes, and automatically integrate the overall source code. These tools help in avoiding merge conflicts, code redundancy, and discrepant code strategies. Continuous Integration tools in DevOps ensure continuous feedback and reduce the project backlog.

When it comes to choosing the best continuous integration tools, so many options are available in the market. These many options can easily confuse you. So we have researched and added the top continuous integration tools in DevOps here.

List of Top Continuous Integration Tools

• Bamboo
• Buddy
• Circle CI
• Travis CI
• Bit Bucket
• Microsoft Azure

3. Test Automation Tools

A test automation tool is software that helps DevOps teams to automate their software testing process with less human intervention. Test automation tools help in achieving higher speed, efficiency, and reliability. Automated testing in DevOps can increase software quality and reduce the risk. Thus automated testing tools play a vital role in the DevOps tools list and DevOps toolchain.

List of Top Test Automation Tools

• Kobiton
• Katalon Studio
• Selenium
• UFT
• TestComplete
• LambdaTest
• TestProject

4. Monitoring Tools in DevOps

Continuous Monitoring is an automated process that uses continuous monitoring tools to empower DevOps teams. DevOps’ monitoring tools are used to enhance the application performance, monitor security threats and compliances across the DevOps pipeline. Not only this, but Monitoring tools in DevOps also help in handling unplanned outages and rapid response to the software issues. Here are some of the best continuous monitoring tools in DevOps for you.

List of Top Monitoring Tools In DevOps

• Raygun
• Nagios
• StatusPage
• Splunk
• Prometheus
• AppDynamics

Learn More About → Continuous Monitoring Tools In DevOps

5. Continuous Feedback Tools

As each phase of the DevOps lifecycle has its own tools, so does the phase of continuous feedback. Continuous feedback tools perform the task of collecting and reviewing NPS data, bugs reports, surveys, and automating many more tasks. Let’s take a look at a few of the continuous feedback tools in DevOps.

List of Top Continuous Feedback Tools

• GetFeedback
• Pendo
• Jira Service Management

6. DevOps Deployment Tools

DevOps deployment tools make the process of updating and distributing software as easy as possible. Deployment tools are used to automate or schedule the tasks so developers and members of DevOps teams can focus on other important tasks. Here are some of the most popular continuous deployment tools.

List of DevOps Deployment Tools

• UrbanCode Deploy
• DeployBot
• Codenvy
• GoCD
• Automic

7. Configuration Management Tool

Configuration management tools in DevOps enable changes and deployment to be faster. These DevOps tools also allow changes to be repeatable, predictable, and scalable to maintain the desired state. The advantages of configuration management tools include easier code navigation, idempotency, and ease of managing many remote servers. Configuration management tools in the DevOps lifecycle play an important role by keeping the end state of the software code the same. Here are some of the best configuration management tools for you.

List of Configuration Management Tools

• CFEngine
• Chef
• Puppet
• Salt
• Ansible

8. Version Control Tools

Version Control or source control is a DevOps practice to manage and track the changes in source code. The version control tools help software teams to manage all the changes to source code over time. Due to version control tools, DevOps teams and engineers can work faster, smarter, and in more efficient ways. These DevOps tools keep track of every code change so you can refer to it whenever needed. Here are the best version control tools for you.

List of Version Control Tools

• Git
• CVS
• SVN
• Mercurial
• Monotone

Learn More About → Version Control Tools

9. Azure DevOps Tools

Azure offers multiple DevOps tools for each phase of the lifecycle. Azure DevOps tools empower users to manage their work and grow seamlessly with them throughout the development process. There are multiple DevOps architectures and tools that Microsoft Azure offers.

List of Azure DevOps Tools

• Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS)
• Visual Studio
• Azure Pipeline
• GitHub
• Azure Monitor
• Azure Boards

10. DevOps Automation Tools

Automation plays a crucial role in DevOps. We need to implement automation from code generation, implementation, integration, deployment, testing, and monitoring. DevOps automation tools are software that help us in integrating and automating the delivery pipeline of DevOps. The entire DevOps lifecycle is integrated and made fluent through automation tools. Here are some of the best automation tools in the DevOps industry.

List of DevOps automation Tools

• Gradle
• Docker
• ELK
• Terraform
• Vagrant
• Kubernetes
• OverOps

These tools will help you to automate and streamline business processes. Now that you know everything about DevOps tools, you can choose the best one for yourself. But to get the best of DevOps, just learning and using DevOps tools isn’t enough. One needs to be aware of DevOps best practices and implement them in their day-to-day business and processes. Here is the list of DevOps practices that can help.

DevOps Practices

Apart from using DevOps tools, organizations using DevOps bring it to life by implementing certain practices. These DevOps practices are made constant throughout the Lifecycle. DevOps practices reflect continuous improvement, acceleration, and automation. Each DevOps best practice focuses on one or more phases of DevOps lifecycle.

Some of the best practices for DevOps are:

1. Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration is a DevOps practice to automate the integration of code change during the software development process. It allows developers to merge the code into a single repository, run automated tests, and build on it. Continuous integration in DevOps aims to address bugs quicker, improve software quality, and reduce the time required to validate and update software.

Learn More About → Continuous Integration

2. Continuous Delivery

Continuous Delivery is a DevOps practice where code changes are built automatically, tested, and released to the production environment. It expands to continuous integration by deploying code changes to the testing/production environment. It follows a continuous delivery pipeline, where tests, automated builds, and deployments are organized as a single workflow.

Learn More About → Continuous Delivery

3. Microservices

Microservice architecture is a design approach where a single application is built as a set of small services. Each of these small services is called a microservice and can be deployed and operated independently from each other. Each microservice communicates with the other through the Application Programming Interface (API). Microservices are built around business needs and capabilities. Each service is scoped to a sole purpose. The main benefit of microservice is that you can use different frameworks, tools, and programming languages. Also, they can be deployed independently as well as a group of services.

Learn More About → Microservices

4. Infrastructure as Code

Infrastructure as Code is a DevOps practice in which infrastructure is managed using code and software development techniques such as continuous integration and version control. The API-driven model of the cloud allows system administrators and developers to interact with infrastructure programmatically and scale better. System Reliability Engineers (SRE) can interact with infrastructure as they treat application code by using code-based tools. As infrastructure and servers are defined by code, they can be deployed quickly, duplicated reliably, and easily updated with the latest version and patches.

Learn More About → Infrastructure as Code

5. Monitoring and Logging

Monitoring and logging, also known as continuous monitoring, is a DevOps practice in which the Devops team monitors the entire Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). Each phase of the DevOps lifecycle from planning, development, integration & testing, deployment to operation is monitored in this DevOps practice. It allows teams to have full-time visibility on the entire performance and health of an application.

Organizations can understand how updates and changes have affected the end user’s experience by collecting, categorizing, and analyzing the data and logs. This also helps in getting to the root cause of the problems and figuring out the unexpected changes. Whereas performing real-time analysis and creating alerts helps to monitor more proactively.

6. Communication and Collaboration

Increasing collaboration and communication in an organization is a key DevOps practice. By implementing DevOps tooling and automation, the development and operations team collaborate and communicate easier and better. Through project tracking systems, chat apps, and wikis, DevOps teams set strong cultural norms and information sharing. This helps to speed up the communication across operations, development, and other teams like marketing and sales. The overall communication and collaboration practice in DevOps allows different teams in organizations to work more closely on achieving the end goals of a project.

7. Situational Awareness

It is of utmost necessity for every team member to have access to data to complete their jobs quickly and effectively. Team members also need to be aware of the failures in the delivery pipeline and receive timely updates on the performance and health of an application. DevOps metrics, traces, logs, monitoring, and alerts are all vital sources of feedback for situational awareness.

8. Automation

Automation is one of the most important DevOps practices. It helps DevOps teams to move quickly through the software development process. By implementing the automation in your organization, tasks such as code changes can be done through automated builds in no time. Other processes such as repository management, testing, deployment can easily be automated to save time and resources.

Learn More About → Automation

Apart from these DevOps best practices, IT security also plays an important role. Let us learn about the security in DevOps.

DevSecOps: The security in DevOps

DevSecOps is a new term in application security. It is all about introducing security in every phase of the software development life cycle (SDLC). DevSecOps expands the collaboration between development and operations teams by including the security team as well. Let’s see what DevSecOps actually is.

What is DevSecOps

DevSecOps represents a necessary evolution in which organizations can represent security. In simple terms, DevSecOps can be defined as a combination of Development, Security, and Operation. From design to delivery, DevSecOps integrates security at every phase of the DevOps lifecycle.

In earlier days, security was implemented at the end of SDLC by a separate security team, and then a Quality Assurance (QA) team was used to test it. This was quite manageable when updates were released only once in a while. But now, software developers have adopted Agile, and DevOps approaches. This resulted in a bottleneck situation for the security team.

Thus DevSecOps was introduced to streamline IT security. It addresses the security issues as they emerge and fix them at the initial stage. Apart from this, DevSecOps made security a shared responsibility of all teams rather than solely depending upon the security team.

Let us understand the differentiation between DevOps and DevSecOps.

DevSecOps vs DevOps

The concepts of DevOps and DevSecOps seem to be very similar, but there is a very thin difference between them. Here is a clear to cut comparison of DevSecOps vs DevOps.

From the above comparison of DevSecOps vs DevOps, the difference between them would be clear. Yet, there is much more to learn about DevSecOps. But do not worry, we have covered it all here.

Learn More About → DevSecOps

DevOps adoption: The DevOps culture, methods, and challenges

Adopting DevOps requires a commitment to eliminate and update your organization’s processes, teams, tools, and culture. It means providing the necessary infrastructure to teams so they can automatically build, deploy and manage easily. Thus DevOps is not just a technology to be implemented but a culture that needs to be adopted.

DevOps Culture

DevOps practices automate and streamline processes through technology, DevOps culture starts with the organization’s people. The adoption of DevOps requires making necessary changes in the way teams work and collaborate. DevOps adoption may seem tough initially, but when an organization is committed, it delivers outstanding results. To make it easy, we have listed some DevOps culture practices for smooth DevOps Adoption.

• Collaboration, alignment, and visibility
• Shifts in scope and accountability
• Shorter release cycles
• Continuous improvement

Learn More About → DevOps Culture

DevOps Methods

There are few DevOps methods that organizations can use and speed up their development process. Among all, Scrum, Agile, and Kanban are the most popular DevOps methods. They can be said as software development methodologies or SDLC methodologies as well.

I. Scrum Methodology

Scrum is a framework in which organizations can address complex problems while remaining productive and creative in delivering high quality. Scrum methodology defines how DevOps teams should work to accelerate development while assuring quality (QA). The scrum method includes streamlined workflow and key terminologies like daily scrum meetings, sprints, and time boxes. Also, it needs a designated role of a scrum master.

Learn More About → Scrum Methodology

II. Agile Methodology

Agile Methodology refers to a software development methodology that follows an iterative approach. In the Agile method, solutions and requirements evolve through strong collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. Agile development methodology enables teams to deliver value faster with great quality and has a great aptitude to respond to change. In short, it aligns with the Agile manifesto.

Learn More About → Agile Methodology

III. Kanban Methodology

Kanban is a workflow management method for streamlining, managing and improving services to deliver knowledge work. Kanban helps in maximizing efficiency and improving continuously. Kanban tracks the software project’s work in progress (WIP) on the kanban board.

Learn More About → Kanban Methodology

Challenges in adopting Devops

The majority of organizations, whether it be small or large, have adopted DevOps. But some companies are yet to adopt DevOps. They certainly feel the pressure. Here are the 9 common challenges that organizations face when they go for DevOps adoption.

• Moving from traditional & legacy infrastructure to microservices.
• Integrating tools in different processes.
• Changing current processes to more efficient ones.
• Using separate tools for Dev and Ops teams and the clashes between them.
• Adopting the DevOps mentality.
• Understanding of Continuous practices.
• Implementing automated test strategies.
• Resistance to change.
• Implementing continuous learning.

DevOps Engineer

One of the key roles in implementing DevOps is of a DevOps Engineer. The role of Devops engineer needs a wide range of skills from development to operation. But there is a lot of misunderstanding about – Who is a DevOps Engineer? Does he handle all the code and operations? Well, it’s not exactly like that. Let’s understand who is DevOps Engineer, what are their skills, roles, and responsibilities.

What is DevOps Engineer?

DevOps Engineers are IT generalists who have knowledge of both operations and development, including DevOps tools, infrastructure, and system administration. They also possess interpersonal skills as they work across the organization.

DevOps have the capabilities to take a holistic approach in the entire DevOps lifecycle from coding, deployment, testing, maintenance, and update. Apart from this, DevOps engineers are also responsible for understanding the roles of different teams and implementing the relevant tools, practices, and DevOps methodologies.

Learn More About → Who is a DevOps Engineer

What does DevOps Engineers do?

When working on a software development project, different teams will have different goals. The IT operations team will prioritize scalability, reliability, and fewer changes for the users. The development team will focus on new features, updates, and overall code development. At the same time, the security team will have their goals.

It is the DevOps Engineer that ensures the collaboration of work to get the best version of a software application. They are responsible for bringing new ideas and implementing methodologies to reduce complexity and enhance reliability, quality, and security. In all of this, A DevOps Engineer acts as a bond between all the teams.

So you might be wondering what are the skills needed to be a DevOps Engineer. Let’s discuss all the DevOps Engineer skills in brief.

DevOps Engineer skills

The DevOps Engineer skills requirements vary depending upon the organization, its team structure, tools, and technologies in use. But skills such as strong communication and collaboration are a must. Also, a DevOps Engineer must understand all the phases of a delivery pipeline and the advantages and disadvantages of tools and services.

There are many DevOps Engineer skills in common. Some of them are as follows:

• Communication and collaboration
• Configuration management
• System administration
• Container and container orchestration
• Continuous integration
• Continuous deployment
• Coding, frameworks, and scripts familiarity
• Understanding of DevOps tools and toolchain
• Monitoring and analytics
• Version control
• familiarity with network protocols
• Syncing with testing and QA team

Learn More About → DevOps Engineer Skills

Apart from the skills mentioned above, there are some DevOps Engineers roles and responsibilities they need to handle.

DevOps Engineer Roles and Responsibilities

The role of DevOps Engineer combines the aspects of technical development roles and IT operation roles.

The major roles and responsibilities of DevOps Engineers include:

• Setting up a new infrastructure
• Choosing, analyzing, and implementing DevOps tools and toolchain
• Gathering and understanding stakeholder requirements
• Delivering clear and precise requirements to developers and making sure that they understand them clearly.
• Automating and enhancing the development and release process
• Examining and testing the code and code changes
• Ensuring the overall system and application security
• Identifying bugs, technical problems and fixing them
• Collaborating with developers through smooth and on-time development processes.
• Planning of projects and taking involvement in the project management decisions.
• Monitor the entire DevOps lifecycle and ensure the processes go as intended.

Learn More About → DevOps Engineer Roles and Responsibilities

What is DevOps Team?

In layman’s terms, A DevOps team is a team of DevOps engineers specializing in different roles and carrying out their responsibilities. Generally, the DevOps team consists of engineers and IT specialists from the operation and sometimes from security. A DevOps team may differ for an organization depending upon their business requirements and strategies. But there are a few common roles in the DevOps team.

These roles are:

1. DevOps Evangelist
2. Release Manager
3. Software Developer / Tester
4. Experience Assurance professional (XA)
5. Security & Compliance Engineer
6. Automation Architect
7. Utility Technology Player

More and more organizations are choosing DevOps. Tech giants like Amazon, Etsy, and Netflix use DevOps teams to ensure productivity and high-quality end product. With the adoption of DevOps, tech teams of all sizes see dramatic positive changes and productivity in their work. Besides, the development time is reduced to a great extent.

It is not always necessary to have an entire DevOps team. Especially when you are just beginning with DevOps, there may be cases where you require a single or few DevOps Engineers. In such cases, you can hire them as per your requirements. Let’s see how to hire a DevOps engineer.

Hire DevOps Engineer

As DevOps engineers’ requirements vary from organization to organization, hiring a DevOps engineer can be a difficult task. DevOps means different things to different people, and you need to find the mix of the right skills as per your requirement.

Besides that, there might be a question “ where to hire a DevOps Engineer ? ” Well, there are many platforms where you can find a freelancer or regular website like Dzone and StackOverflow to recruit an individual DevOps engineer. But this method of hiring a DevOps Engineer comes with a huge risk. You won’t get any guarantee or integrity about your resource.

Whereas hiring DevOps Engineer from a reputed company can overcome your challenges easily. The advantage of hiring with such a specialist is you get a qualified outsourced resource for your needs with guaranteed service.

If you are looking to Hire DevOps Engineer or DevOps Team, OpenXcell is a one-stop solution for all your needs. With us, you get top-notch qualified resources and complete control over your team. With the experience and knowledge of DevOps tools and technologies, our DevOps Engineers can optimize your business process and improve the overall productivity of your business.

Here are the reasons why you should hire DevOps Engineers from OpenXcell.

• Skilled and experienced resources
• Reduce development and operations cost upto 60%
• Recruit top 1% of industry talent
• Complete source code authority
• Security and privacy maintained with strict NDA
• Full ownership of the team
• Complete transparency with no hidden charges

Still not convinced? Don’t worry, here are the reasons why choose OpenXcell.

Summary

Implementing DevOps from scratch requires the understanding that it is just not an initiative, technology, or tool. DevOps is a cultural shift and a philosophy for an organization’s practices and teamwork. To successfully implement DevOps, you need to understand it as a journey.

You need to understand where you are in this journey, what mistakes you have made, and where you want to be.

We, at OpenXcell, have been through this journey and its ups and downs. We have successfully tackled the roadblocks of this DevOps journey. And now we are on a mission to assist anyone who wishes the same.

Our different working models have helped numerous organizations over the globe. Whether it be your one-time DevOps project, or your continuous requirement for Devops Engineers, or an entire DevOps team, we have covered it all. Our experts are here to answer your questions and solve your queries. Feel free to contact us for your DevOps-related queries, and we would be happy to help you.