Top 10 Enterprise DevOps Best Practices for Transformation

A well-planned DevOps strategy plays a vital role in achieving the above-mentioned traits in a shorter period of time.  According to a market research report, DevOps is expected to grow at a rapid pace of 24.2% CAGR and will touch $57.9 Billion by 2030. DevOps has become synonymous with respect to software development and more and more businesses are embracing DevOps strategy to fast track their digital transformation process.

How DevOps helps with digital transformation goals

Fuels better customer experiences

The 3 main strengths of DevOps in digital transformation are; it makes delivery of systems reliable and faster, it improves the overall service quality of all the stakeholders involved, and the third it helps develop better systems. Since the process is fast and fully secure, it offers a superior experience for customers who stay happy.

Supports the shift to product-centricity & improve 

With DevOps everything is focussed towards building a better product that can reach market at a faster pace and new changes can be tested and implemented without disturbing the existing system. 

DevOps (and DevSecOps) embed security throughout systems lifecycles

Development without security could lead to cybersecurity risks that are totally detrimental for the business growth. DevOps enable security through preventive scanning, enabling the developers to write more secure code and enforce automated security checks throughout the process.

Helps people bust silos

One of the key advantages of DevOps is that it aids digital transformation by breaking down organizational silos. To achieve success in digital transformation, it is important for the development team to implement transformation across the complete spectrum of the organization.

Helps teams scale advanced analytics and AI

Data analytics and AI are integral parts of modern business growth and DevOps helps the development team to integrate analytics throughout the development process.

Top 10 Best Practices

1. Test Automation maintains the flow of the Software life cycle

To develop high quality code, it is imperative that developers test their software frequently. DevOps enables early testing for development and also aids in continuous testing that will ensure errors are detected upfront instead of waiting till the development is completed. Test automation is possible by identifying test cases, the right set of tools for automated testing with an appropriate environment. Some of the popular test automation tools are Selenium and UFT.

2. Continuous Integration for high-quality performance solution

Unlike traditional systems, developers using DevOps model frequently update the code changes in the repository after which it is automatically built and tested. Some of the tools for Continuous Integration are Jenkins, GitLab and TeamCity.

3. Configuration Management is Crucial

Configuration management is key to the success of software development using DevOps. It involves automation, monitoring, control and maintenance of both system and network configurations. Some of the popular tools are Chef, Puppet and Ansible.

4. Production Support is a mandate

When it comes to Enterprise-level digital transformation, production teams are always looking to release new versions or bug fixes. DevOps will provide appreciation of things that occur in production to the developers and give them an opportunity to learn and enhance their solutions.

5. Real-Time Visibility is of utmost importance

Stakeholders would like to have a real-time visibility of enterprise-level DevOps toolchain and environment. This will enable them to stay updated on what is happening. DevOps strategy enables developers to focus on deadline-driven activities while simultaneously updating the stakeholders with regular status updates.

6. Continuous Delivery permits to launch the application faster and frequently, in quick cycles

DevOps supports continuous delivery where newly developed code is tested using automated testing tools, and once all test cases are passed it is automatically deployed in production. This enables the development team to build, test and launch application faster in quick cycles. Jenkins, Buddy, Jenkin X, etc are some of the popular Continuous Delivery tools. 

7. Continuous Deployment makes businesses extra responsive

CI/CD are core to the DevOps development strategy. The development lifecycle consists of code development, testing, versioning and deployment. Using CD, all these sub-strategies are fully automated and done at a rapid pace. Since a new release can be launched to production in a shorter period of time, this will make the business more responsive. Some of the popular tools for Continuous Development are AWS Code deploy, Octopus Deploy, Jenkins and TeamCity.

8. Monitoring of Software to optimize the application performance

Continuous monitoring is key to optimize application performance and detect bugs upfront. There are several monitoring tools available that the DevOps development team can make use of. Some such tools are DataDog, Splunk and Monitis.

9. Continuous Feedback

Feedback loops are essential for communication between tests that spot errors and tests that your preferred choice. The test tool will automatically mark the test with the object so that the developers will know what happened, why it happened and when exactly it took place.

10. Use the Right Toolset

Here are some of the best tools for DevOps based development.

• Jira
• Jenkins
• Docket and Kubernetes
• Git
• Ansible
• AWS DevOps

Case Study: Capital One

Capital One considers itself as a startup in the Banking industry even though it started in the year 1988. 

Development journey

In 2010, they realized that their customers are shifting towards online and mobile for banking operations. This is where their digital transformation journey began and since then they have undergone the following changes.

• Adoption of agile practices
• Building automated test cases
• Automating deployments and tests
• Migration to the public cloud

DevOps Initiatives

Phase 1:

• Configuration management
• Automated middleware
• Application delivery to the relevant environments.

Phase 2:

• Infrastructure moved to public cloud
• Full infrastructure automation with infrastructure as code
• Automated delivery pipelines

Phase 3:

• Robust delivery pipelines
• Automated quality tests
• Pre-approved releases

Get started with TAFF

We’ve given enough impetus on the importance of DevOps for successful digital transformation but it is only possible with an expert team who have hands-on experience in extensively completing successful digital transformation projects. Contact us for a detailed discussion and our portfolio of DevOps based digital transformation projects that we have delivered over the years.

• Best DevOps Implementation
• DevOps Best Practices
• Successful DevOps Transformation