Commercial Integrator February 2021 - 35

processes. People involved in DevOps implementation
must be trained together and
digitization technologies, cloud infrastructure
and modern data management techniques
must be leveraged in accelerating
the adoption of DevOps in an organization.
Apart from the factors stated above, continuous
integration and continuous delivery
(CI/CD) are also cited as pillars of successful
DevOps implementation.
To establish and optimize the CI/CD
model and reap the benefits, organizations
need to build an effective pipeline
to automate their build, integration and
testing processes. Selecting the right tools
is critical for building that pipeline.
Choosing the Right DevOps Tools
There is no one single tool that meets all
DevOps requirements. The smartest move
is to choose a set of tools that best suit the
organization's software delivery environment,
team and application.
The right tools enable organizations
to create a strong DevOps foundation,
achieve a continuous process right from development
to deployment, help optimize
resources and costs, facilitate seamless
execution of the processes and eventually
meet organizational goals.
While choosing the right DevOps tools,
organizations must consider the following
factors:
› The tools should have enterprise-class
automation capability. It will help scale
the organizational workflows and
continuously enhance the processes
without adding extra work.
› DevOps creates a need for integration
of the entire delivery ecosystem. Therefore,
the tools should have integration
capabilities.
In addition to the two factors listed
above, tools in the DevOps setup must be
agile and cloud friendly.
Some popular tools used for enabling
enterprise DevOps setup:
Defining the Right Processes
Processes in the DevOps setup should be
iterated quickly with automation. It is the
iterative processes in the DevOps set up
that make way for continuous feedback and
ensure that teams are always ready to incorporate
changes in the working software,
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continuously test and deliver it.
A couple of points to consider when defining
DevOps processes in an enterprise are:
› Clearly defined release management and
continuous deployment processes from
the start help reduce the risk of miscommunication
and misalignment with goals.
› Agility in the processes makes it easy
for the enterprise to absorb, test and
deploy changes.
› Transparent workflows help create
visibility for all teams involved in the
delivery process.
› Test automation could be a major pitfall
if not dealt with correctly - involve
external experts, if needed.
› Lean practices allow accelerating the
feedback cycle, responding to changing
business needs and efficiently eliminating
software development wastes.
› As quality is an integral part of DevOps,
establishing a simple and connected
mechanism to keep track of the right
quality metrics and drive continuous
monitoring and validation of operational
quality is critical.
› Clearly outlined roles and responsibilities
help team members have a better
understanding of the processes they
must follow.
› Automating the different stages in the
delivery pipeline help in accelerating
the overall delivery process.
Training People
While tools and processes are essential,
one factor that cannot be ignored is the
people involved in the DevOps implementation
process.
The best way to get DevOps right is to
ensure that people across the delivery cycle
are more open to change while adopting
an innovation mindset.
To make DevOps the culture of the
organization, each person involved in the
process must be aware of their roles and responsibilities
and trained to work together.
The faith of the organization's leadership
in DevOps and their support in driving the
DevOps culture is also vital for DevOps to
be a success.
For DevOps adoption to be successful,
there are three critical aspects that
organizations need to track continuously:
quality of software, speed of delivery and
performance of the software.
To track these aspects, organizations
must measure the following key factors:
› Lead time: Reduce the lead time (the
time required to deploy the project).
› Deployment frequency: Execute smaller
deployments as often as possible.
› Automated test pass percentage:
As DevOps heavily relies on automation,
tracking how well-automated tests
work is a useful DevOps metric.
› Defect escape rate: Check how many
defects make it to the production stage.
› Availability: Check for outages of all
kinds by keeping an eye for the Mean
Time to Detection (MTTD) and Mean
Time to Recovery (MTTR).
There is a lot of work that goes into delivering
good software. DevOps ensures that
the end-to-end delivery process is streamlined
to the " T " . But it is important to understand
that DevOps is not the goal point.
It is a means to enable the organization to
deliver best-quality software with maximum
speed, functionality and innovation.
Debbie Zelten is the director of application
development and business intelligence
at Synoptek.
FEBRUARY 2021 Commercial Integrator 35
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Commercial Integrator February 2021

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