Before DevOps, it would take forever to deploy to production, even with all the benefits of agile principles and practices. DevOps merges development staff and their processes with operational teams to enable collaboration, speed up development and deployment, and get updates and upgrades out to customers more quickly.
It relies on continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), where all developers merge their code changes in a central repository on a regular basis. This framework has made updating software and satisfying customer needs much easier and faster
How does DevOps drive agility?
Traditional agile working doesn't extend to operations, which is where DevOps comes in. With developers and operations working together, an agile approach, which focuses on collaboration, fast releases, and customer feedback, is implemented throughout the entire SDLC.
But speed isn't the only issue here. Successful DevOps requires secure, resilient code delivered time and time again, something that only proliferates as you start to scale.
That's why automation, governance, longevity, and security are baked into the CI/CD framework. Rigorous testing at multiple stages along the pipeline, for example, ensures errors are caught early, reducing bottlenecks, speeding up integration time, and amplifying feedback loops.
How can we scale it?
Scaling CI/CD requires a strategic and multifaceted approach. You can't simply take on tools and keep your fingers crossed that everything will fall into place. Successful CI/CD relies on evolving your people, processes, and tools to work in unison. Let's take a look at what's required of all three.
Tools
Choosing the right CI/CD tools to support DevOps scaling is crucial. That means those that can handle more teams, more remote agents using autoscaling and more availability with a robust recovery plan in place. Your tools should grow as the organisation does but offer flexibility for the different teams they need to work for – and the different technologies they need to be able to integrate with.
With multiple teams working across microservices, monolithic and legacy apps, Dockerised containers, and the potential for different deployment destinations, your tool needs to be robust and flexible enough to handle it all.
Processes
A pipeline-as-code (PaC) approach means pipelines are always available to devs and ops teams, and version control is part and parcel of the process. This improves collaboration and knowledge sharing, as anyone can ask for support and giving feedback is seamless.
It also means you can roll back to a previous configuration if there's a problem and maintain a clear audit trail of all the changes made to the source code. For most situations, a standardised and automated pipeline is key, too, to avoid myriad ways of building your products' pipelines across multiple teams.
People
Easy adoption is significant for scaling success. If tools and processes only work for those in the know, you'll struggle to get new teams to use them. Make sure your tools support easy adoption of CI/CD practices and take a collaborative approach as you scale.
One step at a time is best. Migrate something small and simple to build confidence and increase buy-in before moving on to more complex parts of the business.
Scared of scaling?
Don't be. We're here to help you implement the CI/CD tools that will enable your DevOps initiative to soar and your teams to build, test, and deploy software more efficiently. Get in touch to find out more.
