How To Develop A DevOps Process From Scratch?

The prospect of deviating from the familiar terrain of "business as usual" is an endeavor that often elicits a daunting challenge. It also necessitates a significant investment. So, any organization wishing to embrace novel technologies, methodologies, or approaches must be compelled by an unassailable business exigency. 

Thus, in the quest to usher in the novel paradigm of DevOps, a cogent business rationale must be established. It is only through a meticulous understanding of the business case to develop a DevOps process from scratch that a successful and transformative transition can be achieved.

Getting Started with DevOps 

DevOps is the union of two unlikely bedfellows - Development (Dev) and Operations (Ops). Like pineapple on pizza, Patrick Debois, Gene Kim, and John Willis introduced this approach in 2007-2009. This revolutionary movement has sparked a new way of thinking about teamwork, bringing developers and operations together. By doing so, they can deliver business value to users at lightning speed, leaving their competitors in the dust. Who knew that Devs and Ops could be such a dynamic duo?

Furthermore, the DevOps movement is dependent on three axes: 

• A Culture of Collaboration: DevOps is a way of working together where people with different skills and expertise (like developers, Ops, and testers) work as a team. The goal is to add value to the product they are developing quickly.
• Processes: To achieve rapid deployment, DevOps teams follow agile methodologies that consist of iterative phases, promoting improved functionality quality and speedy feedback. These processes are not only integrated into the development workflow with continuous integration but also into the deployment workflow with continuous delivery and deployment. The DevOps process is further divided into several vital phases:
  • Planning and prioritization of functionalities
  • Development
  • Continuous integration and delivery
  • Continuous deployment
  • Continuous monitoring.
• Tools: In the past, when teams were split into Dev and Ops, they often used their specific tools - developers with their deployment tools and Ops with their infrastructure tools. It resulted in a wider communication gap between the two teams, further complicating matters. However, in the new DevOps paradigm, the choice of tools is paramount, as it serves as the glue that binds these disparate teams together. By carefully selecting the right tools, DevOps teams can work harmoniously, using a unified set of tools that allows for seamless communication and collaboration.

Develop a DevOps Implementation Plan

There are five key factors that you must strive to achieve to develop DevOps process from scratch: 

• Scalability
• Reliability
• Collaboration
• Frequent and rapid delivery
• Security 

While working towards these goals, you often hear that DevOps and Agile are two peas in a pod. Indeed, with their iterative nature, DevOps and Agile complement each other beautifully. However, it's essential to note that the DevOps implementation strategy should be treated as a distinct initiative with its unique set of goals and objectives.

To help you achieve your DevOps implementation checklist or goals, here are some steps that will guide you towards a successful DevOps implementation roadmap for your organization:

Evaluate your current organization's state

DevOps implementation in the real world can be challenging as it requires replacing existing methods with newer ones. Therefore, it's important to analyze your company's pre-DevOps situation and understand the solution patterns of the applications you want to build.

Take Netflix, for example. In 2008, a major database corruption issue caused them to be unable to ship DVDs to their members for three days. This situation made them realize the need to move away from vertically-scaled single points of failure towards horizontally scalable, highly reliable, distributed systems in the cloud. After seven years of diligent effort, Netflix completed its historical cloud migration to AWS in 2016.

Furthermore, as the number of subscribers increased, Netflix's struggle with the monolith system also intensified. Customizing Windows images was manual, time-consuming, and error-prone. However, a thorough understanding of the company's current state made Netflix aware of these problems. As a result, they improved their methodology and service deployment by leveraging new technologies and developing their own tools.

By analyzing your organization's current state and identifying areas of improvement, you can build a successful DevOps implementation approach tailored to your unique needs. With the right tools and technologies, you can achieve scalability, reliability, collaboration, frequent and rapid delivery, and security, just like Netflix did. 

Set DevOps goals in your organization

The first step in transitioning to a DevOps culture is to prioritize self-awareness and effective communication within the team. DevOps is a transformative culture that encourages individual preferences while also promoting collaborative decision-making toward a common goal.

To achieve success in the project, there must be open and transparent communication among all team members. To achieve this, emphasize automating your processes. Here's why — incorporating automation can help ensure continuity and improve communication across remote locations. Through close collaboration, a more empathetic culture can be fostered, enabling operations to work together seamlessly toward achieving desired outcomes.

Prepare for a mentality switch 

Adopting DevOps requires a significant shift in business processes, which can take months or even years to implement fully. To successfully set up the DevOps process and culture within your organization, consider the following tips:

• Educate your team on the DevOps development cycle and how it will impact the organization. This will help prevent culture shock and resistance to change.
• Always keep the end-user experience in mind and emphasize how DevOps can help improve it.
• Encourage a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement by automating testing environments and gathering feedback to iterate on processes and projects.
• Foster a mindset of continual improvement, encouraging your employees to find more efficient ways to execute solutions.
• Discourage a blame culture by promoting mutual responsibility across the organization, not just among development and operations teams.

To successfully leverage the benefits of DevOps implementation, getting buy-in from all teams to minimize resistance to change is essential.

But if you don't have a DevOps specialist on staff or need help running the orientation program, then consider hiring a DevOps implementation partner.

Speaking of which, Invozone's DevOps engineers are here to help! We streamline software development processes, automate tasks, and ensure seamless team collaboration. With our expertise, you can focus on creating awesome products while we handle the technical heavy lifting.

Choose a Competent Team

To successfully develop DevOps process from scratch, the success depends greatly on having a qualified and enthusiastic team, whether in-house or outsourced. Your team members should be well-versed in advanced DevOps tools, capable of devising innovative solutions for complex scenarios, and possess the persistence necessary to troubleshoot and debug until the root cause of an issue is discovered. To create a well-rounded team, consider including a release manager, automation experts, testers, QA lead, and SecDevOps engineers.

To put it differently, the importance of assembling the right team cannot be overstated. The 2020 DevOps Trends Survey revealed that a lack of skills is the primary obstacle to achieving success with DevOps implementation.

Structure a DevOps Process 

The DevOps implementation steps incorporate numerous valuable practices refined over years of implementing DevOps concepts in the software production industry. These developer operations are designed to automate tasks, increase productivity, and expedite issue resolution and bug fixing throughout the software development lifecycle.

Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD)

CI/CD are essential practices for successful DevOps implementation services. CI involves integrating code changes regularly into a shared repository to detect errors and conflicts early on. CD picks up where CI ends by automating the delivery of code changes to different environments, such as development, testing, and production.

At Spotify's Technology Infrastructure Group, the product managers developed Tingle, a tool that automates the CI/CD process and streamlines the pipeline configuration process. Tingle provides a consistent CI/CD experience for all types of jobs, including data, backend, and web services. This centralized system has helped teams set up new projects quickly and significantly reduced the time from set-up to the first build and deployment.

Therefore, organizations like Spotify can quickly respond to changing consumer needs and ensure the quality of application updates. DevOps practices such as CI/CD are vital in building a robust and efficient software development pipeline that meets the demands of modern-day software development.

Continuous testing

Continuous software testing is another crucial element in delivering high-quality applications to users, and the rapid feedback loop it provides is a key factor in improving software quality.

A DevOps poster child, Netflix has successfully cultivated a DevOps culture through organic means. In 2011, Netflix created a tool called Chaos Monkey to test the resilience of its IT infrastructure. This tool deliberately disables computers in Netflix's production network to test how the remaining systems respond to the outage. As an outcome, this innovative approach to testing has enabled Netflix to build robust and reliable systems that can withstand unexpected failures and provide uninterrupted services to its users.

Continuous deployment

Continuous Deployment is the last stage of the software development pipeline. In this stage, the software artifact is automatically launched and distributed to end-users via scripts or tools. It ensures that the software is always up-to-date and accessible to users.

One of the leading pioneers of DevOps is Amazon, which has made remarkable strides in the field. In 2010, Amazon made a successful transition to DevOps when it moved from physical servers to the AWS cloud. To ensure a streamlined and efficient software delivery process, Amazon developed a continuous deployment process managed by an internal system called Apollo. This system empowered developers to deploy code on-demand and on any server, providing them with the flexibility to release software updates as and when required.

By 2011, Amazon had achieved an impressive milestone, deploying new software updates an average of every 11.6 seconds to production servers. This achievement was only possible due to the seamless integration of DevOps practices throughout the software development pipeline.

Microservice architecture 

Microservices are a new trend in software development that complements the DevOps philosophy. This architecture involves breaking down complex applications into small, deployable services that handle specific business logic. It enables delivery teams to develop, test, and deploy individual services independently. In addition, it simplifies the development process and minimizes the risk of one service crashing or impacting other parts of an application.

For example, Uber's backend consists of several thousand microservices that interact with each other through remote procedure calls (RPC). Eventually, you will have a highly scalable and fault-tolerant system.

Container management system 

Containers are gaining popularity for packaging and deploying microservices.  With the help of container orchestration tools like Kubernetes, you can easily manage container clusters. Netflix has developed its container management tool, Titus, to handle unique requirements and streamline the containerization process. Titus powers critical aspects of Netflix's business, such as video streaming, recommendations, machine learning, and big data.

Select your DevOps tool 

The world of DevOps offers a plethora of tools, from release planning to building, testing, and delivering applications safely. The sheer number of options available makes it easy to get overwhelmed and make mistakes. To avoid this, seek expert help and focus on selecting tools that fit together cohesively. 

For example, for virtualized environments, consider using tools like NAKIVO Backup for VMware for data protection and recovery, Kubernetes and Docker for container orchestration and deployment, Ansible for automating configuration management, and Terraform for provisioning and managing infrastructure—all of which can integrate smoothly into your DevOps toolkit to enhance scalability, security, and efficiency.

To achieve this, it's important to have a deep understanding of how each tool will be implemented. Concurrently, avoid creating "disconnected islands of automation." Ultimately, an integrated toolchain and systematic automation implemented with tools aligned at each stage are the end goal. 

Monitor Performance

DevOps aims for velocity, quality assurance, and application performance. To achieve continuous improvement, teams need to collect and analyze metrics aligned with relevant business goals and KPIs. Essential metrics for DevOps teams to measure include 

• Deployment Frequency
• Lead Time to Changes
• Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR)

Other metrics to consider are 

• Financial status 
• Customer perspective
• Innovation perspective
• Internal procedure

These metrics provide visibility and control over the software development pipeline and help map an organization's velocity and growth.

A Final Note 

With the pace of innovation and competition increasing, it's becoming more important for businesses to implement DevOps. However, almost half of the organizations have only been practicing DevOps for less than three years. The roadmap to develop the DevOps process from scratch can be complicated and requires continuous improvement. In other words, it is not a one-time initiative, even after implementing continuous practices.

Prioritize Your Culture. Pick Our Team

Well, well, well, look who we have here! 

If you're looking for a reliable DevOps implementation partner, then you've come to the right place. InvoZone is here to help you out! We specialize in keeping your applications running smoothly, so you don't have to worry about a thing.

Let's Start!

Frequently Asked Questions 

What is the DevOps process? 

DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality.

How long does it take to learn DevOps from scratch?

It takes, on average, 6 months, but the time duration can vary from project to project. 

Why do startups need DevOps for their projects? 

DevOps practices are a startup's secret weapon for success, offering many benefits, such as quick responsiveness to market changes, a data-driven culture, streamlined team collaboration, enhanced productivity, and cost reduction. With DevOps methodology, startups can accelerate their development speed, increase customer trust, improve customer experience, and stay ahead of the competition.

Why is it important to develop DevOps from scratch?

Developing DevOps from scratch allows organizations to streamline their software development and delivery processes, reduce errors and downtime, and increase efficiency and productivity. It also promotes collaboration and communication between teams, improves customer experience, and helps organizations stay competitive in a rapidly changing market.

What are the key steps to developing DevOps from scratch?

The key steps to developing DevOps from scratch include:

• Assessing the current state of the organization's software development and delivery processes
• Identifying areas for improvement
• Establishing a DevOps culture and mindset
• Selecting the right tools and technologies
• Implementing continuous integration and delivery
• Automating testing and deployment processes
• Continuously monitoring and measuring performance

What challenges might organizations face when developing DevOps from scratch?

Some challenges that organizations might face when developing DevOps from scratch include: 

• Resistance to change from traditional processes
• Lack of alignment between development and operations teams
• Cultural barriers
• Lack of expertise in DevOps practices and technologies
• Inadequate infrastructure to support automation and collaboration

What are the benefits of DevOps? 

The benefits of DevOps are:  

• Faster and more frequent delivery of software
• Improved collaboration and communication between teams
• Increased efficiency and productivity
• Enhanced reliability and security
• The ability to quickly adapt to changes in the market and business needs
• Better meet customer demands 
• Improve overall customer satisfaction