The software industry is one of the biggest and most important. Computers are used in virtually every aspect of business, education, health, and life. Developing, building, and testing new programs and apps is complex. You may have noticed that there are many acronyms and terms that can be confusing. One that you might have heard of is DevOps. Although it may sound like a creature from Greek mythology, DevOps is an essential process in computer science. A portmanteau of development and operations, it does involve a combination of those two processes. There is no universally accepted definition and DevOps is better understood by how it works in practice.
A Brief History of DevOps
The process is used everywhere in the creation of software and DevOps support Boston is also readily available. The definition of a process that would become DevOps was created in 1993 at the Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture Consortium. TINA-C defined a model of a service lifecycle by combining telecommunication operation with software development. In 2009, a conference called DevOpsDays was held in Ghent Belgium. This led to the launching of the annual state of DevOps report in 2012. By this point, DevOps had developed into a functional model.
DevOps in Practice
More important than a specific definition is how DevOps is used in a practical sense. By combining the tools, methodologies, philosophies, and practices of the development and operations teams, DevOps creates a pipeline in which software projects can flow smoothly through planning, testing, building, monitoring, and releasing. Integrating and linking these two essential software teams increases the speed and efficiency of software development and can lead to a better product being released. This is good for customers, the software company, and the industry in general.
Benefits of DevOps
There are several benefits to using DevOps in the software creation process. Development teams are able to view coding not as a straight-line process but rather as a continuous cycle. This makes it easier to integrate with the operations team to implement agile development. Small improvements can be prioritized and made where they are needed quickly and efficiently. Essential steps such as initial design, proof of concept, testing, deployment, and revision are all streamlined leading to a better product for customers with better ongoing support.
The operations team benefits from being able to collaborate with the development team to extend the agile process beyond the software itself. This can be carried over into the platforms used in actual working IT environments. The creation of software and its practical applications can work hand-in-hand. Planning for the delivery stage begins during the design stage. This kind of cooperation and forward-thinking can reduce the risk of finding out later that some features are not practical in an actual IT environment. DevOps combines the strengths of both the development and operations teams.
Software development can improve many aspects of business and life. However, it is a complex process involving many steps. The implementation of DevOps helps the two essential teams, development and operations, to be able to work together throughout the entire cycle for a better end product.
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