Ways to improve a DevOps process
DevOps is not done by magicians!
Therefore, DevOps engineers need to belong to teams who continuously improve from past lessons.
DevOps teams need to ensure continuous software development, implementation and delivery, and at the same time reduce the risk of errors. The only way this can be reached is by building passionate, ever learning and self-improving teams of all-round capable specialists that follow a pattern of thinking “you build it, you run it”.
Everyone should learn how to manage expectations and utilise proven tools to decrease the common burden.
So, how do you improve the DevOps process?
Here is what I have learnt in my experience in DevOps roles.
Do more regression testing
Regression testing helps solve problems early in the DevOps process. That is why developers should maintain a top-level view of the entire project since many elements have dependency chains that prevent forward progress until certain items are completed. The process can be optimised by plenty of regression testing. As the developer, you must be prepared to say “we haven’t tested and we haven’t delivered the features so we need to push the release back so we can deliver the functionality as promised”.
Automate, where possible
A business typically has one team that manages the bug fixing that comes from the QA-ing process of a previous release and, at the same time, work on a new one. Bug fixing takes a lot of time, putting the team into a tough decision on whether to waste time from the new release development to the fix bugs in the old one. A piece of advice would be to automate where possible. For example, if you are repeating a process more than once, then you should probably think that this process might need automation.
Improve, improve, improve
The most crucial method for improvement is to learn from the past. The best way for future improvement is to use applications to measure and manage performance from the DevOps teams and their releases.
It is all about fundamentals
An experienced person can be an asset to the business. Always make sure to assign the analysis of a quantitative code to the eyes of a lead engineer/developer if you want it to be analysed properly by someone who is detail-oriented.
Audit and Plan
It is especially important to perform an audit of the maturity of the software delivery lifecycle. Also, planning is a key factor to meet the deadlines, that is why the estimation of timeframes and expenses of each activity required for the task is needed.
Maintain for real
This stage is the longest and the last, and is often neglected, but is so important it should not be forgotten. DevOps should ensure the optimal allocation of resources and business continuity by monitoring the system process, improving the workflows, updating, patching and upgrading the existing infrastructure.
To conclude: every developer should remember not to go to release if the software has not been fully tested, and that your lead developers are lead developers because (in my experience) they pay attention to the smallest of the details. And finally, share information and speak of issues before it becomes everybody’s problem.
