Bridging the Gap Between Development and Operations for Faster and More Reliable Software Delivery

Authors: Swamy Prasadarao Velaga

Country: India

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Abstract: This paper aims at identifying the fundamental practices of DevOps with an emphasis on its contribution towards solving the challenges that exist between development and operations in order to enable the fast and efficient delivery of software. This review is based on a literature review of research articles, industry reports, and case studies that explores the principles of DevOps, tools, cultural changes that are needed, advantages, and disadvantages, and future trends in DevOps. DevOps is simply the combination of the words development and operations and is a cultural change that aims at increasing collaboration and efficiency through the integration and automation of infrastructure and processes as well as the monitoring of application performance [1]. Traditionally, the two sides of the development and operations have been separated which created many problems and slowed down. These issues are resolved by DevOps which promotes the integration of development and operations where the team is involved in the DevOps process from the development phase to the implementation phase. Main principles and activities of DevOps, which are considered as crucial, are Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD), Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and monitoring and logging. CI and CD practices guarantee that the code changes are tested and released automatically hence increasing the rate at which code changes are released. IaC helps in configuring and provisioning of resources in the form of scripts that can be understood and executed by machines thereby avoiding human errors. DevOps tools like Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, and Ansible have been effectively used to automate and accelerate the DevOps processes. These tools help in code integration, testing, deployment, and infrastructure management which helps teams to deliver software in a faster and more reliable manner. The paper also reveals the comparison between these tools based on their characteristics, benefits, and drawbacks [1]. Cultural and organisational transformations are vital components of DevOps as a practice. The methodology prescribes the breaking down of the walls between the development and operation teams to promote joint accountability, open communication, and feedback. Agile and Lean principles have been recognised as the fundamentals of DevOps and are therefore based on the concept of continuous improvement and iterative software development.The space of software development has seen a substantial transformation with the onset of Agile and Lean methodologies. The increase in pace of software delivery has led to multiple releases in a single day becoming almost a norm [2]. With this enhancing shift, comes an operational bottleneck - operations teams are not always ready to support such a delivery cycle. Development and operations are often considered siloed areas but are indeed interdependent for the successful delivery and maintenance of software in a production environment. Various studies report that implementing DevOps practices lead to higher performance, shorter lead times, better quality of software, and more reliable deliveries. Ever since the publishing of the Agile Manifesto, Agile Development has created value and customer orientation by focusing on small and user-centric feature deliveries. The same pace of development is expected to be reflected in the deliverables of the operations team, which become an enabler for frequent, short-cycle releases [3]. With the significant increase in the pace of software delivery, development, and operations teams are often not on the same page, let alone the same time frame. DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization's ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity.

Keywords: Test-Driven Development (TDD), Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), Software Quality, Bug Reduction, Software Testing Methodologies, Code Quality Assurance, Code Maintainability, Testing Frameworks, Organizational Adoption

Paper Id: 1776

Published On: 2015-11-21

Published In: Volume 3, Issue 6, November-December 2015

Cite This: Bridging the Gap Between Development and Operations for Faster and More Reliable Software Delivery - Swamy Prasadarao Velaga - IJIRMPS Volume 3, Issue 6, November-December 2015.

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