IT organizations are always in competition with each other. With the rising pace of improvement in technology, such organizations have to stay ahead of their competitors and deliver the desired product or service quickly. Delivering at speed is a significant challenge and DevOps helps in making this challenge simpler.
DevOps is the amalgamation of development, operations, and tools that allow enterprises to deliver software quickly without compromising its quality. Automation and integration allow the IT ops team to create, test, deploy and monitor the applications with ease. Cutting it short, DevOps is all about minimizing errors, automation of tasks, eradicating blockages, and reducing the Software Development Cycle.
Even though DevOps may seem an excellent way of reducing the SDLC, it highly relies on a toolchain. The DevOps toolchain allows the development, operations, and security team to collaborate to manage and automate the software development workflow.
Before understanding DevOps Toolchain, it is essential to understand the fundamentals of DevOps. DevOps is based on the concepts of continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery (CD), collaboration, and automation. Considering that fact, a single tool cannot boost the software development cycle which is why a set of tools are used. A combination of such tools in DevOps is called a DevOps Toolchain. The collaboration of different open-source tools aids in solving issues in the software development stages.
The primary motive of the DevOps toolchain is the automation of development and deployment processes, making software delivery reliable and affordable. Creating a suitable toolchain requires a lot of testing and using the right combination of tools. With that in mind, teams spend several hours in the experimentation of tools to get the right toolchain. The tools included in the toolchain should aid in every phase of the development cycle along with features to monitor and manage the lifecycle.
Without a doubt, DevOps culture helps extravagantly in product delivery. However, it is essential to have skilled DevOps engineers who can use the DevOps tools effectively, and getting skilled personnel is expensive. It is vital to determine whether getting a skilled employee and changing the infrastructure of the company is worth it or not. Here are some factors that will help you in understanding it in a better way.
When it comes to creating a program, its delivery plays a significant role. Faster delivery speed can make the organization stand out from its competitors and have an upper edge as well. DevOps tools can automate several stages of the software development cycle, resulting in faster delivery and deployment of the created software.
Spending more than necessary on a task is not a good business model. An organization can only reach the top spot when it can manage its time and finances effectively. DevOps tools will make the product improvement process smoother and eradicate any hindrances as well. With this betterment in the process, program creation expenses, as well as time used in the process, can be minimized. As the expenses decrease and the time increases, the same can be put to good use for the expansion of the organization or to build new and better programs.
No software is made perfect and issues can occur anytime. However, it is the task of finding resolution which is daunting. However, DevOps tools can make this complex task easier through their extended functionality and state-of-the-art qualities.
The proposition of a workflow management tool is a pivotal value for IT managers. They are blending into the culture and help in analyzing the business data. Moreover, these tools can build dashboards that help in operational data. The toolchain can automate the data in real-time that allows the team to attain the data whenever required.
Maintaining utmost security should be the priority of every organization. Sometimes. Enterprises can have a misunderstanding on the security responsibility. Failing to recognize this understanding can lead to data threats and breaches. With the DevOps toolchain, organizations can have better security without having any data breaches. These tools can help in monitoring, data encryption, post-incident review reporting, and meeting regulatory compliance which overall contributes to having excellent data security.
To create a DevOps toolchain, it is essential to know about the different tool categories. These categories are divided as per their functionality and how they affect the overall functioning of the software development.
Collaboration with other teams including development, and testing is the key element of DevOps. They collaborate to automate the process and these tools aid the teams to work no matter where they are geologically located. Collaboration tools enhance the communication within the teams, making the release faster and efficient.
Project management tools are used to accumulate user requirements that aid in coding projects and dissect them into small tasks. Moreover, they monitor the tasks till it’s complete. Project management tools also support practices like Kanban and Lean.
Every entity related to the organization including employees and stakeholders’ shares common goals which is why having utmost transparency is essential. Planning tools like Clarizen and Asana boost overall transparency within different teams so that everybody could know where the process is headed to.
Version-controlled coding spaces allow several developers to work on a single codebase at the same time. In order to move the code to the next phase automatically, source code repository tools are used. These tools can be integrated with the CI/CD, testing, and security tools as well.
Even though better transparency boosts in getting great results, still there are plenty of other actions that can further enhance the outcome. Tracking issues is made easier and faster with issue tracking tools. However, to get the most of such tools, every team in the DevOps culture should be using the same tracking tool.
Test Automation Framework tools are excellent for program testing. These tools are a blend of libraries and software tools. Moreover, they make use of automated testing processes like performance testing, security testing, contract testing, unit testing, penetration testing, and functional testing. Some of the tools support AI that aids in the reconfiguration of the testing process.
Configuration is an essential aspect of the system and can be a daunting task sometimes. Configuration management tools are made specifically to automate the configuration of the system. Management of infrastructure as code that prevents configuration drifts on all environments is the primary task of such tools.
Orchestration is basically automating the build, test, delivery, and deployment of the software. Orchestration tools help in fulfilling this task and in-house development teams can manage them with ease.
As the code needs to be smooth throughout the route (from the machine to the production environment). As the product can be developed daily, having a repository manager can help in the entire route of the code. Binary Repository tools can help in containing metadata, code, and binary software artifacts which aids in the overall flow of the code.
Storing, processing, and managing a broad range of crucial data every day is a major task of every organization. Database tools assist enterprises in managing the enormous amount of data that can easily be processed for application development.
Detecting issues in a DevOps culture is a crucial task and monitoring tools help DevOp engineers in doing so. These tools analyze the data, provide insight to the engineers which aids them in diagnosing and eradicating any system issue and improving the system’s performance.
Feedback is the most essential element for effective communication. When it comes to improving product quality, continuous feedback tools help DevOps engineers in understanding customer issues by getting customer feedback through several mediums like self-service issue ticketing, head mapping, and surveys.
Creating a DevOps toolchain requires the collaboration of five aspects mentioned below:
The first thing that should be considered before creating a toolchain is to accept the reality and understand the change in the culture is required. Getting toolchains that reduce the development cycle. In case the toolchain is unable to accomplish the task, it is essential to accept that the toolchain is not going to help in the future and a new toolchain is required.
Being relevant to the latest trends is the need of the moment to attain the DevOps ecosystem. Understanding the relevance is essential to leverage the benefits of the toolchain. Sometimes understanding the trends can be complicated for some organizations. This goal can be fulfilled by studying the organizations that have already applied the DevOps toolchain in their culture. Learning from their success is the key to staying relevant in creating a DevOps toolchain.
Mere attaining data is insufficient. Analyzing the obtained data and creating reports is what helps the organization. Analyzing the present software development process and tools used for it will help in attaining pivotal details including time taken for the SDLC phase, efficiency, and accuracy. This information can be used to understand loopholes and weaknesses in the system.
When the vision about the necessary changes is clear, you can begin shortlisting the tools that will aid in the process. Start by creating a blueprint of the toolchain by using the knowledge gained. Moreover, it is essential to use the new tools to change the present metrics. The new tools play a significant role in the process and can change the entire functioning of the system.
In the present times, rapid changes are necessary for the business to stay ahead of the competitors. Bringing the required enhancements in the system may be necessary frequently. The created DevOps toolchain should be built in such a way that it can manage unplanned modifications without any hindrance to the system. This goal can be achieved by strategizing a toolchain strategy that will aid in handling loopholes in the system, allowing you to plan everything accordingly.
Express delivery of the software has become the priority of every enterprise. DevOps toolchain is making the software development lifecycle automated, collaborative, and faster through the amalgamation of various tools. Without a doubt, picking the right tools is a primary task in the DevOps toolchain set, but other tasks like present strategy and determining improvement areas are also essential. DevOps toolchain is practically used in every industry for the delivery of software. Getting skilled employees along with the right set of tools is the way to succeed with this technology.
