Does application development really need DevOps?
What tools do we need?
Do I need to revise my budget to shift to DevOps?
“I am skeptical about the ongoing costs of CI/CD.”
This is a story of every company, striving to achieve continuous integration and deployment. According to a recent study, about half of organizations have DevOps strategies in place with the aim to achieve continuous integration and continuous delivery in the future.
This study does not reveal, however, seriousness or approach to implement the DevOps. DevOps has been on the list of many companies; what steps they take to make it part of development are important to consider first.
If you really want to achieve continuous development and is ready for transformation, the transition to DevOps will not be scary. All thanks to recent advancement, the transition has become easier. Moreover, a number of tools, guides and services are available to streamline this transition.
Prior to beginning with DevOps, you first need to understand the importance of shifting left. It is something that completes DevOps.
Shift left is a major term of the DevOps world, as it accounts for continuous integration and continuous deployment initiatives. It refers to continuous testing earlier during the product development, or you can say, it is the movement from right to left in a flowchart that has different phases. The flowchart begins from left and goes to right covering planning, development to deployment, etc. The sole aim of shifting left is to cut upfront costs and fasten delivery.
The relationship between shift left testing and DevOps automation
But why do you need to shift the left side? The point of moving to leftward is to begin with testing in early phases of development. This step solves many post development issues. Bugs become significantly expensive to fix at the end of application development. According to research by IBM Systems Sciences
When development teams have to undergo long backend test cycles, they are likely to clamp down. Sometimes, though, in the wake of completing sprints as soon as possible, teams might end up not delivering the product they had expected in the beginning. Not only does this disrupt cross departmental liaison, but it also affects the overall quality of the product, budgets, and delays.
When a DevOps engineer pushes the team leftward, DevOps success is ensured. The division among v (responsible for coding, testing, etc.), QA (responsible for pre-deployment testing), and ops (deployment and operations) always occurs as the result of pre-DevOps pipelines; however, DevOps works on breaking silos to foster continuous testing and deployment.
Keys for shifting to the left
Enough has been said regarding the benefits you are likely to enjoy by shifting left. What is the right way to begin with it? Check out the points mentioned below:
1. Architecture
Checklists are always there in organizations that are approved prior to developing any application. Having checklists is good; however, verification of checklists takes a lot of time and incorporates a lot of manual steps. DevOps comes up with a designed architecture that involves a “Shift Left” mindset. Developers turn checklists into templates by codifying, which, in turn, allows cross-teams use them any time.
2. Agile
DevOps works on the grounds of agile. When you implement DevOps, agile will prevail, which allows testers to deliver project, per deadlines by finding loopholes throughout the development period and reducing the time between releases. Agile flourishes an organized process across the organization so that the DevOps team can accomplish all tasks in the most effective way.
What else you will enjoy?
1. Hassle free execution
As teams will be able to locate where the process lacks, necessary steps can be taken on time that ensures the quality-oriented product.
2. Satisfied business partnersWhen the process is agile, no compromise with requirements will there. Moreover, any upfront changes are always welcomed; therefore, customer compliance is ensured.
3. Automation
Shifting left triggers automation, which cuts down time required to doing testing, configuration, and deployment activities.
Taking advantage of continuous integration tools, for example, Jenkins permit organizations to start automating the test process – running automated builds and tests when you add a new code to a source repository.
When you have test automation tools in place, you can enable integration, performance, regression, and acceptance testing.
If you want to make the build, test, and deployment process more transparent, configuration management tools, for example, Puppet, Ansible, and Salt-stack are available at your disposal.
4. Containers
Container technology provides you with tools and techniques to shift development and test activities to the left.
A major benefit of containers is developers can compile together multiple applications and their dependencies in a container, which you can use, create, and develop at any point in time without any need of additional automation.
Since developers get access to multi-tier application environments through containers, a DevOps team can perform upfront integration and other performance tests during the development lifecycle.
How to Get Started?
To embark on a successful DevOps journey, you need guidance from someone who has experience working in it. Softobiz has a proven track record of helping businesses in DevOps Migration to unlock high performance and scale new tangents of success. You can use our in-house DevOps expertise to achieve the maximum efficiency in your business operations.
Want some real-world advice about DevOPs? Talk to Our Experts
