Why every business needs DevOps and how is it different from agile?

DevOps has been there in the industry for quite some time. But in recent years this has become one of the hottest trends that every business is talking about. DevOps is more of a paradigm shift, a cultural transformation than a new technique to be adopted. It aims at blocking all the barriers between the IT operations and Developers. This would help prevent unprecedented hurdles in the development phase and avoid delays.

What does devops do?

DevOps is a lot of things. If there is one thing that we are sure about DevOps, it is the fact that it is not another technology trend de jour. It is going to be around for really long and it is going to leave some last lasting impact on businesses.

Benefits that DevOps deliver to your business:

We know DevOps is proving beneficial to businesses big and small. But do all the businesses need DevOps? There is a never-ending dispute around this question. While some experts believe that it is something that every business needs, there are those that argue that only those in the IT service sector might need it. No matter what, one thing we know for sure is the fact that DevOps enhances customer engagement. It also comes with a lot of business benefits. So whether a business adopts a rigid system to incorporate DevOps or not, simply drawing inspiration from the idea and make processes better. It is not something that would require a very high investment right in the early stages.

1. Competitive advantage:

This is definitely the first advantage of adopting DevOps. All the recent studies that analyzed businesses using DevOps have shown that these businesses have been found to perform slightly better than the competitors in the market. These have been seen to achieve at least 200 times the number of deployments more than the competitors without DevOps.

2. Proven improvement in the deliveries:

When we say improvement, it involves quicker and more consistent deliveries. Most delays in the deployments occur due to hold-ups that occur due to unexpected errors and the associated resolution times. The quality of work improves as developers have more time focusing on what really matters than focusing on fixing unplanned errors.

3. Better for both the employees and the customers:

All the major conflicts in a business are mostly found between the IT operations and developers especially when the deadline approaches. But with DevOps, the collaboration between the teams is made better. Employee engagement is thus improved. And with the faster deliveries and better quality of the product or service, customers are happy too.
DevOps companies have reported that the failure recovery times are at least 24 time faster. And as errors are identified early, they are easier to fix and take less time as well. Both time and cost spent on error resolution come down.
We know that DevOps is beneficial. But what exactly it can do to your business would depend on the type of business and your current processes. The best part about DevOps is that it doesn’t come in a one-size-fits-all pattern. It is a system of practices that can blend in with the existing system and slowly make it better by simply replacing not the entire process but just the outdated practices. This would thus cause a more permanent effect. This would result in visible improvement in the quality of the delivered product not once but every single time in the future too.
For some businesses DevOps starts showing its effects very soon. But for some the effects might take years to be visible. In these cases, chances are that it is mainly working on improving consistencies and preventing the common conflicts rather than shortening the delivery time. This would start showing in the reduction of costs if not in the improvement in the revenue.

How is DevOps different from Agile?

DevOps and Agile are so similar and yet so different. The strategies might appear a little similar. While Agile focuses on the processes and works on making the development better, DevOps focuses more on practices and works on making every step up to the deployment better. The agile team doesn’t get involved with the operations. Agile cares about the best strategies to complete the development cycle on time. DevOps on the other hand takes into account the timely development and deployment of a reliable product.

• Agile and other methods are more team focused. But working in silos would not be the best practice in the coming years. DevOps, taking this into account works in breaking down the silos and improves the engagement of the teams. This creates a trend of cross-functional teams that perform together to meet the collective business goals rather than competitively.
• With DevOps the operations would better understand the product being developed and thus be able to support in every possible way. Both the teams would understand the details about the project and communicate so as to regularly update the progress. As with Agile the updates might not always be on a daily basis for DevOps.
• We know that Agile teams are generally small. But with DevOps we are talking about cross-functional teams. These are generally large. This would be more of a group of more number of teams working closely together right up to the stage of delivery of the product to the user.
  Whether or not DevOps is required for your business and how much you change the current business model to allow DevOps would depend more on your business. Take into account your current practices and processes and take a call to Mobinius.