10 DevOps Best Practices in 2023

Developers are always looking for ways to improve their product quality and productivity. One of the most common strategies used to achieve both is implementing DevOps. Developers have embraced DevOps and changed the way they used to work. This change has led to significant improvements in overall results.

However, there is still a lot of confusion around DevOps and how organizations can leverage it to improve workflow. So in this article, we’ll discuss everything about DevOps, including:

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a set of practices that combine software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the systems development life cycle while delivering features, fixes, and updates frequently in close alignment with business objectives. It emphasizes communication, collaboration, integration, automation, and measurement of cooperation between software developers and other IT professionals.

DevOps practices are designed to enable organizations to serve their customers better and compete more effectively in the marketplace. It is also characterized by operations staff and developers collaborating in a shared culture. This collaboration includes version control, automated testing, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and monitoring of applications. By automating and streamlining these processes, organizations can improve the speed and quality of their software delivery and reduce the time required to fix problems.

But does your organization need DevOps? Let’s explore the importance of DevOps.

Importance of DevOps

DevOps helps organizations increase their agility and ability to deliver new features and services faster while improving the quality of service and reducing operational costs. DevOps enables teams to quickly develop, deploy, and monitor applications and services in a continuous delivery pipeline, which results in better collaboration, communication, and automation of processes. It also helps organizations be more responsive to customer needs, quickly deploying new updates and features. Additionally, DevOps helps organizations reduce outage risks, improve security and compliance, and reduce costs associated with manual processes. Some of the benefits of DevOps are:

Increased Deployment Frequency: DevOps allows teams to deploy more frequently with shorter lead times, leading to faster time to market and improving customer satisfaction.

Improved Collaboration: DevOps promotes a culture of collaboration between teams, leading to better communication and more efficient workflows.

Automated Testing: Automated testing with DevOps allows teams to detect bugs quickly and reliably, improving software quality.

Increased Security: DevOps provides improved security through automated security checks and tools that can quickly detect and address any security vulnerabilities.

Cost Savings: DevOps reduces the costs associated with software development and maintenance by automating many of the manual tasks that were previously done by hand.

Responsive to Business Needs: Testing, deployment, and maintenance are generally managed by the development team. With DevOps, developers can respond to business requirements promptly. Also, the developers can be involved in various steps like building, implementing, and monitoring to provide immediate services to the users. Developers will also be able to respond quickly to bug fixes, updating and modifying applications.

How Does DevOps Work?

With the implementation of DevOps, the development and operations teams are no longer “siloed”. Sometimes, the two terms get combined to form a single team in which the engineers work across the whole software development lifecycle, from idea and development to deployment to operations, and build several skills not limited to a single function.

In fact, in some DevOps models, the QA and security teams may also get more integrated with the development and operations teams throughout the software development lifecycle. Also, when security gets involved in the process, the model is referred to as DevSecOps.

Now, these teams use various practices to automate processes that were traditionally manual and slower. They leverage tech stacks and multiple tools to help them operate and evolve applications as quickly as possible with minimum issues. The tech stack and the tools allow engineers to work independently and accomplish multiple tasks—e.g., code deployment, provisioning of infrastructure—that would, in the traditional way, have required the involvement of other teams. This, in turn, improves the development velocity and the end product's quality.

Now that we’ve discussed all the basic things about DevOps let’s get into the main part— best practices for implementing DevOps to get the best possible results.

DevOps Best Practices

Solely implementing DevOps might not help you achieve the desired results. You need to implement it in the right way. Here are some of the best practices that you can use to make the most out of DevOps.

Automate and Avoid Manual Work

Automation has become an integral part of the software development process. With automation, developers can reduce manual work and focus more on important tasks that demand their attention. Automation provides confidence in the systems and processes, reduces errors and miscommunication, and improves development and production velocity. There are multiple vertices in the software development processes that can be automated, thanks to the new-age tools. All you need to do is, identify the processes that can be automated and try tools to automate them.

Monitor Performance

Without continuous monitoring, you won’t be able to see the difference that the adoption of DevOps has made. There are several metrics like lead time, mean time to identify, and issue severity that can help you measure the success of DevOps implementation.

Monitoring such metrics is crucial because it helps developers to identify issues early in the development phase and eradicate them. Also, these metrics will help you to create goals for your organization and build expectations. The reason is that some metrics, such as unit cost, are linked to profitability and are linked to the engineering team.

Monitoring metrics like unit cost is essential because it aids in the development of cost-effective software from the beginning. This is because you determine the costs from the beginning and get to plan everything related to expenses.

Establish Infrastructure as Code

Cloud infrastructure should be considered an important part of the software development process and treated equally to application code. By following the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach, we can incorporate certain best practices that help improve the development process, such as version control and CI/CD, into infrastructure creation.

This way, developers can remove the need to manually set up and configure resources via UIs, resulting in strengthening automation efforts across the IT landscape. Modifications are always auditable and transparent, and developers can always roll back infrastructure systems to the previous version when any issue arises.

Thinking one step ahead, instead of relying on infrastructure engineers to create the necessary infrastructure, push for a self-service infrastructure model. In this way, anyone from the DevOps teams can leverage some tools to build infrastructures on their own. This, in turn, will increase productivity and velocity while giving autonomy to developers.

Use Agile Methodologies

The first step to adopting DevOps is implementing agile project management.

Teams divide a goal into small steps using the agile methodology to ensure that they are moving in the right direction at the right pace. This is essential as DevOps promotes a continuous deployment strategy.

Agile development teams leverage adaptive planning and are ready to change the processes at any point during the process. They can handle any unforeseen issue and respond to comments from the operations team as they are adaptable.

Agile and DevOps are very similar when it comes to culture. They both embrace change and prioritize the quality of the product and user satisfaction. When combined, DevOps extends the meaning of Agile and involves both development and operations teams instead of just focusing on the development team.

Culture of Collaboration

DevOps is all about collaboration. This is why it is important to focus intensely on growing a culture that lets people collaborate freely and eradicate the fear of failure. Organizations that boast values like trust and empathy are more likely to gain benefits from adopting DevOps. Break down the silos between different teams and make them work together to achieve a common goal and improve the end results.

Also, team members are expected to share their knowledge and insights with each other, and to work together to find solutions that benefit the entire organization. The focus is on building trust between team members so that they can work together more effectively and efficiently.

Change Management

The goal of DevOps change management is to reduce the risk of disruption, increase the speed of delivery, and improve overall system quality. To achieve this, DevOps teams must have a clear understanding of the current system and its environment, as well as the desired end-state. Automation is used to streamline the process and increase efficiency. Additionally, governance processes are put in place to ensure that changes are implemented according to company policies and regulations.

DevOps change management is a key component of successful DevOps implementations, as it enables teams to manage changes in an efficient and effective manner. By leveraging automation, collaboration, and governance, DevOps teams can ensure that changes are implemented with minimal disruption and maximum quality.

Utilize CI/CD Pipelines

CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) pipelines are a powerful tool for DevOps teams to streamline and automate the software development process.

CI is a development practice that encourages developers to integrate their code into a shared repository frequently, allowing for more rapid testing and feedback. This is done by setting up automated tests that run against the code when it is checked in.

CD is a series of processes that ensure changes to application code are quickly and reliably tested, built, and released into production. This is done by setting up a pipeline of processes that allow for automated testing, building, and deploying of code.

A CI/CD pipeline is a set of automation processes that allow for code to be built, tested, and deployed quickly and safely. This allows developers to focus on creating new features instead of debugging and manually testing code. By automating the process, teams can ensure that high-quality code is delivered at a faster rate and with fewer errors.

Use the Right Tools

To implement DevOps in the right way, you need several tools for different purposes. Here are some of the good-to-use tools when you start implementing DevOps:

Automation Tools: Automation tools such as Puppet, Chef, and Jenkins, are essential for DevOps. They help to automate the application and infrastructure management process, allowing for faster and more efficient development.

Cloud Platforms: Cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, Rackspace, and Google Cloud Platform are fundamental for DevOps. They provide a cost-effective, secure, and scalable infrastructure for applications.

Monitoring Tools: Monitoring tools such as Nagios and Splunk help DevOps teams to quickly detect and troubleshoot issues, enabling them to respond to incidents quickly.

Collaboration Tools: Collaboration tools like Slack, HipChat, and Gitlab help DevOps teams to communicate and collaborate effectively.

Source Code Management Tools: Source code management tools like Git, Subversion, and Mercurial are essential for DevOps teams. They help manage and track changes in source code over time.

Implement Test Driven Development

Test Driven Development (TDD) is an agile software development methodology that encourages frequent and small releases of software, with each release being tested thoroughly. TDD emphasizes the automation of tests, making sure that all parts of the code are tested before a release.

The TDD process involves writing tests before coding and then coding to satisfy the tests. This process helps to ensure that the code is written correctly and all the required functionality is present. The tests are written using a unit testing framework such as JUnit or NUnit.

In the DevOps context, TDD helps to ensure that the code is tested and working properly before a release. This helps to reduce the amount of time spent debugging and allows for more frequent releases.

TDD also helps to ensure that any new code is compatible with existing code and that any changes are backward compatible. TDD can also help to minimize the risk of introducing bugs or other issues. Writing tests before coding ensures that any new code is tested and working properly before it is released. This helps to reduce the risk of introducing new bugs or other issues.

Incorporate Security

Security should be incorporated into the development lifecycle DevOps process as early as possible. This can be done by integrating security into the design and architecture of the system, as well as into the coding and testing processes. Security should also be included in the deployment process, making sure that all systems are securely configured before they are released into production. Finally, security should be monitored and managed on an ongoing basis so that any potential vulnerabilities can be quickly identified and addressed.

So this was all about DevOps best practices, but this is not the only thing that is required to implement DevOps successfully. There are certain challenges that can occur while implementing DevOps. Now in order to address these challenges, you must first know about them.

DevOps Challenges

Whenever you start something new, you will face some challenges. However, it becomes easier to overcome them if you know the challenges before facing them. Here are some of the challenges that would arise when trying to implement DevOps.

Automating Deployment Processes: Automating the deployment processes involved in DevOps is a major challenge. This process requires setting up automated processes, such as continuous integration and continuous deployment, to ensure quick and efficient deployment of code updates.

Security Challenges: Security is an important factor in DevOps, as it is responsible for ensuring the safety of applications and data. Security challenges arise due to the speed with which applications and updates are deployed. This means that it is important to incorporate security checks into the deployment process to ensure that only secure code is released.

Building Cross-Functional Teams: One of the major challenges of DevOps is getting the various teams involved to buy into the process and collaborate effectively. This requires teams to understand the benefits of DevOps and how to work together, which can be a challenge for some organizations.

Integrating Different Tools: There are multiple tools that need to be integrated in the right way when implementing DevOps. These tools help to test, deploy, and build applications in the right way. However, when transitioning from the traditional way to DevOps, using these tools can be challenging.

Implementation Budget: DevOps implementation budgets can vary widely depending on the size of the organization, the scope of the project, and the existing technology infrastructure. Generally, budgets for DevOps implementations can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. However, at first, setting up a budget can be difficult if no proper guidance is available.

How Scantist Can Help?

SCA solutions help organizations to integrate open-source management throughout the DevOps environment. This is critical because it allows organizations to tailor their DevOps environment to manage their needs rather than a rigid vendor-centric framework. So if an organization uses an SCA tool while implementing DevOps, it will help them automate the process of determining, communicating, and acting upon open-source vulnerabilities and license risks as part of the development and deployment work process.

ScantistTry it today