Mad rush for DevOps!
Hang on! Didn’t we just finish other races recently or still racing, SMAC, Cloud, Big Data etc. It is always Old Wine in New Bottle or may be time has come now for that old idea which never took off the ground.
‘Neighbours Envy, Owners Pride’ said one famous commercial for selling their TV sets. I see many companies are in the rush to implement DevOps just to be either first or beat the competition or in their sincere interest to rollout the product faster. The result being, you implemented DevOps but didn't get the desired output yet. We know that the chain is only as strong as the weakest link. Hence, choosing the individual tool is as critical as making all the tools function as one. The sum total performance of all the tools put together being more than the performance of individual tools. There could be many such ‘weak links’ that may pull down your objective.
Can we compare this DevOps to Lego? We try to put the pieces to get the ‘right’ output. Even if you don’t put the right pieces together, still you get to see something in Lego i.e a building with 2 levels instead of 3. You still got a building! Today, DevOps is not far behind in comparison.
With various permutation & combination of tools & technologies that you put together, you certainly get a model, but is it was you desired as a goal?
Have a blueprint ready for DevOps even before you start inducting tools. Understand the following minimum before you venture:
- Your business model
- Software development methodology
- Product roll-out plans
- Target customer profile
- Your budget
These are highly critical inputs for developing a DevOps framework which I am referring to as Blueprint. Once you have this ready, it is only a question of evaluating various tools and mapping it across the life cycle. The true success of DevOps is when a software is developed, tested and deployed in a fully automated factory shop-floor-like setup.
well articulated!
As indicated by the author, yes it's an old wine. *Metaphorically, the wine is getting packaged into the potentials of emerging tools and technologies which effectively delivers the potential value to the connoisseurs. *Technically, Dev Ops is more about establishing synergy among vital artifacts and core competent teams involved. It's about effective collaboration and achieving excellence in delivery /outcomes.
Nice write-up! Migrating to DevOps is not the ultimate solution, and yes you need to have a blueprint ready for DevOps before jumping on to the bandwagon. It involves huge investments in terms of time and resources and is a painful process. It is a paradigm-shift and imbibing major organizational and cultural change is not easy. With different training and work set-ups, it is not easy to suddenly ask the developers and ops people to work together in sync. For DevOps to be successful, begin by introducing laurels for all, make people accountable for the systems they are dealing with, invest heavily in Automation, and provide complete management support. Having said that, to get a more realistic view, a good idea would be that more and more companies introducing DevOps must write down case-studies with a detailed analysis of the major challenges that they face during the process and possible solutions.
Good insight! 👌🏽
Nice one Ramesh. Interesting perspectives