What is DevOps and Why Should You Adopt This Approach?

What is DevOps in Simple Terms?

In any IT-based business, there are two areas that must work together with a reasonable degree of harmony to be effective. On one hand, there is the development team that writes code and creates the software used by the enterprise. On the other hand, there is the operations team that manages the technical systems running that software.

Simply put, DevOps is a way of working that allows developers and operators to work together in a symbiotic, mutually beneficial cycle, rather than as two separate silos that sometimes clash. DevOps can be seen as an approach or an entire culture, but in any case, it aims to increase efficiency throughout all stages of the software development lifecycle.

Why You Should Adopt DevOps

Adopting the DevOps approach in your business offers many significant benefits, including...

1. Faster Software Delivery and Updates

The first reason to adopt DevOps is speed. DevOps evolved from the Agile software delivery method, meaning it can bring software to market significantly faster than the old "waterfall" approach. Since teams work together in shorter sprints, software can be built quickly, and issues like bugs and failures can be resolved faster.

2. Improved Cross-Team Collaboration

We already mentioned teamwork, and this is another benefit of adopting DevOps. While in old approaches to software development and IT operations these two separate teams worked in isolation, with DevOps they work side by side, developing, testing, and releasing software, then checking how it performs on company networks and refining it.

In fact, the entire DevOps process looks like this:

Development

1. Software planning
2. Coding
3. Build
4. Testing

Operations

1. Release
2. Deployment
3. Operation
4. Monitoring...

... and then return to planning further software additions based on the monitoring results conducted by the operations team. All of this improves the quality of services provided and makes life significantly easier for all employees in your company.

3. Enhanced Security

Another benefit of adopting DevOps is the ability to perform continuous security testing, which ultimately enhances the security of software and networks.

Continuous security testing enables the DevOps team to constantly monitor security threats and quickly address vulnerabilities both during software development and in the company's IT infrastructure.

This has many advantages, which you can read about in our article "Why Continuous Software Security Checks Are Important".

4. Huge Potential for Automation

Closely following security is the ability to automate many areas of the testing process as well as other potentially repetitive tasks. This can save significant time, freeing software developers and IT professionals to focus on other important tasks throughout continuous development. Not only does this save existing staff time, but it also helps shorten development cycles and even reduce headcount, allowing investment in other business areas, such as upgrading IT equipment or purchasing additional software licenses.

5. More Innovation

All of the above is perhaps the biggest advantage of adopting DevOps. Automation provides more time, and cross-team collaboration yields better service delivery, so the development team can create more advanced, innovative software that solves business problems in the most unexpected ways. Similarly, by working with the operations team, they can develop software that takes into account the specific constraints and characteristics of existing legacy software and hardware. Thus, DevOps can help you get more value from old systems for a longer period or enable a true digital transformation through specialized solutions designed to propel your business into an exciting future.