Successful DevOps Implementation: Nine Best Practices in 2023
The benefits of Devops implementation are clear; organizations that embrace the shift to DevOps release more capabilities, faster releases and experience fewer performance issues.
However despite the obvious advantages, a DevOps transformation isn’t an endeavour to be taken lightly. As Ian Head, research director at Gartner, predicted, “90% of I&O organizations attempting to use DevOps without specifically addressing their cultural foundations will fail.”
So, if your organization has decided to take the plunge and implement DevOps based transformation project. This is an article that will try and help you guide your thoughts on the best practices, as you move ahead on the Devops implementation project.
1. Do not jump the Bandwagon
- DevOps is not a magic solution or a magic wand for all the problems that the company is facing. It is a long-term solution for the transformation.
- Large programs and larger transformation projects are time-consuming and they take a considerable amount of resources – both time and money. It is important that the organization understands the requirement of a transformation program and lays down the foundational rules for the same.
- Automating everything in one shot is always not the priority.
- Securing the acceptance of the key organizational POCs forms a crucial part of the program. While internal acceptance is critical, it is also imperative that a dip-stick survey and understanding from the external stakeholders is also needed.
2. No more DevOps engineers as a Role
- DevOps was initially introduced and promoted as a software development methodology which will aid agile development process. However, as the days passed the approach transformed itself into a role.
- The DevOps Engineer today only manages the infrastructure. For many organizations, implementing DevOps means, scaling up the team of DevOps engineers. This does not help.
- If DevOps is maintained as a transformational approach rather than a fancy role or profile, then the enterprises could see a huge success in the implementation of the program.
3. Build a Collaborative Culture
- A DevOps team structure requires a change in the way everyone interacts within the organization. Proper communication is essential for a successful DevOps implementation.
- With so many departments and teams collaborating and working together to meet a specific goal, good communication is the key to avoid errors and reducing your chances of failures.
- Hence one should try to adopt or build a collaborative culture and open communication within teams to ensure the success of the Devops transformation process.
4. Conduct Benchmarking
- Before engaging professionals for a transformation program based on the DevOps methodology, any organization must conduct a benchmarking exercise. It helps if these exercises studies multiple things such as number of processes automated, the number of engineers required, the amount of infrastructure needed to scaleup, and much more.
- This exercise will not only justify the spending of time and money by the organization, but it will also help arrive at a starting point for the project.
5. Define the Performance metric
- Like a science experiment is not fruitful, if it does not have an objective the transformation program will also be not fruitful if there are no performance metrics defined at the beginning.
- The relevant project teams involved could work with the relevant stakeholders to arrive at the parameters and then work backward to achieve them through the DevOps based transformation software development methodology.
6. Continuous Monitoring and Feedback loop
- This not only helps avoid any crisis but also helps maintain healthy progress in the development process.
- Before the DevOps era, many research prove that developers generally did not monitor their application performance in production and assumed that any failure is related to infrastructure on which it is run.So, it is crucial for development teams and operation teams to check and monitor the performance of the application.
- Also post monitoring the feedback that you get from internal teams or your customers, also plays a crucial role in DevOps implementation process and is a deciding factor for the success of DevOps transformation.
7. Dashboard automation
- An automated dashboard not only helps the engineers keep a track of the SDLC process, but also helps maintain an active database of changes made to the server and database over a period.
- This dashboard will give you data with in-depth understanding and provide reports of every operation during the DevOps transformation process.
- It also helps to monitor the entire DevOps implementation process along with how effectively the DevOps teams are working together, integration of cloud automation toolchain and an overall platform health status.
8. Getting the right DevOps toolchain
- It is important to leverage all the DevOps based tools such as Kubernetes, Docker technology, Jenkins, Git and others. These tools not only give the project manager a sense of control over the project but also help automate mundane tasks.
- It is advised that the database technology that is used in a large DevOps project helps the company scale-out and not scaleup.
- As per Devops experts, all the toolsets that you choose should be compatible with your system, which is a good configuration management practice.
- A good selection of tools helps minimize any conflicts that can occur between development teams and operations.
9. Modularization of Architecture
- There are a lot of legacy applications that will change as a part of this transformation project involving DevOps.
- So modularization of legacy applications will not only help modernize the environment, but it will also reduce a lot of costly overheads.
- Hence moving from a legacy monolithic architecture to a modular Microservices approach will help in the long run and also ensure a successful Devops implementation
While this is an indicative list of the possible best practices to be kept in mind while a Devops transformation project, the actual list of best practices is arrived at based on the current setup of the organisation, level of automation and tools used, collaboration and inter-communication within teams and also volume of the project.
