As the demand for digital products grows exponentially, IT teams do their best to maximize the value of their development efforts and increase the efficiency of their work. While poised to boost the speed of delivery, all participants of product development should cooperate closely and avoid compromising the quality of the solution they are building. DevOps mission statement chimes with all these goals. This helped the methodology win universal acclaim in the high-tech realm.
What Comes under DevOps and Why Is It Important?
So, what exactly is DevOps, and why has it gained such significant traction nowadays? Being over a decade old, this approach continues to function as an innovative methodology that welds together development and operations teams (which are then called DevOps teams) in their endeavor to swiftly create top-notch software. Why does the DevOps methodology appeal to software companies all over the world?
The ultimate emphasis of DevOps is on uniting IT personnel across several pivotal departments to work towards a single goal and achieve success together. Within the DevOps hierarchy, every participant is accountable and responsible for the prompt release of the product, which is ensured by robust communication between DevOps team members.
By itself, DevOps doesn’t provide any monetary gains. However, it allows high-tech vendors to focus on productivity, profitability, and a larger market share and thus attain big-time objectives. Moreover, if your rivals have already harnessed this methodology, you are to follow the suit as quickly as possible not to lag behind in the cut-throat competition that exists in the modern IT market.
What does a DevOps team do to make software development more efficient?
DevOps Team Responsibilities Explained
DevOps responsibilities cover the following areas.
DevOps Culture Promotion
If the IT company has practiced the traditional division of labor, the transition to a DevOps team structure becomes a major changeover for the personnel. Now they have to break down silos and learn to collaborate with each other. Such radical transformation is impossible without a cultural shift when all stakeholders embrace the novel methodology and support the DevOps leader in evangelizing it across the organization.
CI/CD Pipelines Support
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment are pivotal for a DevOps team. The pipeline encompasses the automation of building, testing, and deployment of software products.
First comes the compilation of the solution through a version control system, which is then validated in accordance with the compliance requirements adopted within the organization. Then, the code is tested, after which the product is delivered to the repository and deployed to chosen infrastructure.
Cloud/Server/Network Architectures Development
The DevOps charter enables developers to create software (typically applications) grounded on any existing type of architecture (monolithic, microservices, cloud, or serverless). To do that, the DevOps department prepares the infrastructure, maps out a plan, and implements it with the help of the relevant tech stack. What differs DevOps architecture-building endeavors is their orientation towards utmost flexibility. The system should have redundancy, resilience, and automated failover integrated into it to rule out CD/CI failures and disruptions.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Set-up
This novel approach handles infrastructure management not through the manual configuration of files and scripts but via employing code in an automated environment. Thus, infrastructure is treated as code, which allows developers to remove errors, perform testing, and implement changes to the entire system on the hoof.
Cloud Migrations Support
Today, hydrating the cloud is no longer considered to be a whim but a necessary step in app deployment. What is the DevOps team’s part in the process? It designs the infrastructure for the app migration, moves the app to the cloud (including system and application data), and ensures the efficiency of security access policies.
Security Compliance Provision
Previously, the security of a solution was taken care of only upon development completion. With DevOps, security is integrated into the very principles of a software piece from its inception, which ushered the notion of DevSecOps. The best practices of this approach guarantee adherence to security compliance requirements throughout all stages of continuous delivery.
Constant Monitoring
As the tempo of development increases, it is crucial for QA to keep pace with it. DevOps lifecycle is honed to execute continuous monitoring of the solution’s functioning by means of automated tests and keeping track of the basic KPIs. Moreover, specialized monitoring tools open the door for a proactive stance in this element of the product development workflow.
IT Support
Not only service desk operators but all members of the team are involved in this DevOps responsibility. They are linked with tickets reporting problems and errors, so remedial actions should be initiated on short notice.
Incident Management
The procedure of emergency handling isn’t very different in DevOps environments. But here, the whole team, irrespective of the DevOps roles performed, participates in it. Any employee with adequate expertise can be involved in fixing the bug or solving any other problem a solution may expose. The mission of the on-call engineer is to identify the right person who can handle the problem and hand over the job to him/her.
The efficient performance across these multiple IT domains is accomplished due to the peculiar DevOps department structure where each employee is assigned a well-defined DevOps role.
What Does a DevOps Team Look Like?
By the book, the DevOps structure presupposes such DevOps team roles.
DevOps Evangelist
This DevOps role definition lives up to its resounding title. This is the leader of changes, who encourages the organization to onboard DevOps practices, establishes DevOps team structure and responsibilities, and ensures proper training of all members. Once the DevOps methodology is kicked into operation, the evangelist is all over it, bringing the employees onto a common footing and removing department silos. At the same time, they continue their motivational and inspirational efforts to optimize ongoing processes and implement DevOps best practices all over the company.
Product Owner (PO)
They are the link between the DevOps team and customers. Product owners communicate with all stakeholders to shape a vision of the future solution. When such a vision is formed, they create a roadmap of the product where all its features are listed, and the sequence of their creation is indicated. At the same time, POs keep the interaction channel with users open to obtain a better idea of client needs and fine-tune the solution in the making.
DevOps Engineer
Being a seasoned maven in the fields of automation tools and security technologies, this person is in charge of the design of the infrastructure the team will use for building and delivering solutions. The roles and responsibilities of a DevOps engineer cover a wide gamut of tasks – from identification of project requirements and KPIs to team composition definition and CD/CI pipelines set-up. In fact, this expert must integrate all resources to see every stage of the product development through.
DevOps Release Manager
As it is evident from the name, the release manager handles the entire release lifecycle, devising an automation pipeline that would enable a smooth development process from coding to production. They also keep track of the feedback to introduce changes into the next release if necessary.
DevOps Architect
This is a person whose task is to map out the architecture of the future system and identify technologies that would be employed for building it. Naturally, a profound understanding of technologies, architecture approaches and tools is a must for the architect.
Security and Compliance Engineer (SCE)
This specialist’s area of responsibility is the security of both the DevOps environment and the product-to-be. The latest trends in this niche demand that security protection measures are integrated into the CI/CD pipeline. Besides, the DevOps security and compliance engineer role also cover ensuring adherence to compliance regulations and standards.
Software Developer
A DevOps developer is involved at every stage of the solution lifecycle. They update the already written code, add new features, run tests, fix bugs, and monitor the product’s performance. Plus, they are supposed to have an idea of the after-deployment behavior of the code. Such awareness is necessary to bridge the gap between development and IT operations, which differs DevOps developers’ role from the one a traditional devs has.
Quality/Experience Assurance Specialist (QA/XA)
Like any other QA people, these experts’ major duty is to determine the quality standards of the product-to-be and develop tests that would control adherence to quality standards. The high development speed guaranteed by DevOps necessitates the employment of automated quality tests.
However beneficial such type of testing might be, QA specialists shouldn’t be carried away by the technical side of the mission. The role of a QA expert in a DevOps team also includes the task of obliging customers who must be provided with the greatest possible user experience. And this is where the XA epitome of the specialist comes to the forefront. (S)he acts as customers’ advocate of sorts who makes sure the solution is user-friendly.
Final Words
When software solutions robustly push their way into the list of the everyday digital commodities, IT companies find it hard to keep up the pace and deliver high-end digital products to consumers within a short time. Roles and responsibilities distributed across a DevOps team empower them to accelerate the development process, making it more productive without causing an adverse impact on quality.
If you want to onboard this methodology but don’t know how to build a DevOps team or have issues with managing existing DevOps teams, Sigma Software can lend you a helping hand via DevOps consulting services we provide. By addressing us, you will get competent advice on harnessing the DevOps approach, which will allow you to effectively handle the DevOps team management process.
