Posts By Alisia

10 Effective practices for DevOps: Advice for Building your Career

According to a forecast by Gartner, by the time 2017 year ends, the demand for mobile app development services will be on an all time high in comparison to IT company’s ability to deliver the same. Many organizations are witnessing a huge boom in demand for mobile application development than their team can deliver. This has led to the adoption of DevOps practice which is basically a methodology that can speed up the process of mobile app development as developers, project managers, and operation specialists come together and effectively collaborate on development process (start to finish) and app deployment process. DevOps is all about creating a culture of collaboration amidst different teams.
In fact, DevOps training is very popular right now with data from Indeed.com showing results which state that percentage of jobs posted from January 2012 to August 2016 increased by over 20 times and this trend is most likely to continue hereafter.
In order to succeed at embracing DevOps, one needs to have a certain personality and professional aptitudes.
  1. Desire to learn new things and improvise consistently
  2. Eager to learn communication and collaboration
  3. If you care about the big picture and have a hunger to fix issues.
  4. Willing to work hard to learn about new technology, tools, and architecture and communication styles.
Moving to DevOps can be a pleasant upgrade but the transition can be far from smooth if you are half committed or not willing to get your hands dirty in getting things done the right way.

Best Practice for DevOps
There are certain best practices that you need to know about if you wish to succeed at DevOps and where organizations can successfully implement and increase efficiency.

#1 Break Down Functional Silos
Functional silos in IT organizations definitely exist. Breaking them down must be initiated from the senior management. Usually, the approach followed in an organization in developing an application is done the assembly line way. One department develops the app, after which one department integrates it and then another department does the quality check with the final deployment. This limits collaboration.
DevOps training can be a solution to this as it mixes the entire team of app development that works together yet taking accountability for a specific category.

#2 Performance Reviews
Evaluating team performances and individual work in a large team can go a long way in increasing efficiency. It is advisable to base a larger percentage of performance reviews for developers and operations personnel in meeting the goal of app development to the final stage of app deployment.

#3 Create Real Time Visibility
There are plenty of contemporary project management software which is automated and ease the monotony of continuously updating project status. These tools can help you in providing real time access to the status of app development and exactly at what stage it is. It further helps in revealing the real resources that are responsible for the current tasks and enable you to have a single-handed view of the app development process which ultimately makes coordination simple.

#4  Automation Tools can Help
One can cut on costs and instances of error by working with an automated application toolset that is most compatible with your IT space. This type of automation can help in code development, system and middleware configuration apart from database changes. Important pre and post production tests can also be carried out that save developers and operations specialist time and effort.

#5 Choose Compatible Tools
It is effective to choose tools that are effective and enable automation with DevOps as teams are able to perform and work better. Choosing automation tools from one single source is advisable as they work in an integrated manner and lead to better performance.

#6 Work with Small Projects
Smaller projects are easy to manage and track. Your DevOps training can help you with managing smaller projects that ensure success and enable smooth collaboration.

#7 Include Business Stakeholders
Your app development process is ultimately targeted towards the end user. When following the DevOps approach, make sure to involve stakeholders in the process and familiarize them with all the stages of app development.
  
#8 Change Management
When there are multiple parties involved in a fast paced app development process, changes are bound to happen. An effective change management process is critical to any DevOps project. Change can be needed at any stage of app development and hence the request should go out to all members involved irrespective of the department.

#9 Deploy Apps
DevOps can be easily leveraged in a continuous app development model where continuous improvements and revisions are done on apps. A continuous app delivery model with a strong change management system helps with new app capabilities delivered to the business in a faster way.

#10 Create a Service Environment
IT industry needs to continuously feel the pulse of business users’ needs and deliver apps that meet or even surpass functionality expectation and market expectation. This can be successfully done if the stress is laid upon team effort, open communication and commit to customer satisfaction.

Conclusion
More and more IT spaces are realizing the relevance of DevOps training. If the current workforce is able to seamlessly integrate their responsibilities the DevOps way, effective collaboration will help in better performances and better apps.