4 Key Steps to Start Using DevOps at Your Business

Technological innovation is rocking the business world to its core. Businesses in all industries have experienced fundamental changes resulting from disruptive technologies. 

Faster software development to keep up with shifting consumer demands has become essential. To achieve this, there must be a union between development and operations teams. 

A DevOps strategy embraces both philosophical and technical practices. These practices aid greatly in improving the speed of development lifecycles.

The state of software development will only continue to evolve. As the leading implementer of DevOps for banking, we know that a strong DevOps strategy will help your business to thrive in the coming digital age. 

In this article, you will learn about 4 key steps for implementing DevOps at your own institution. Plus, we will cover the benefits of DevOps for your business to help shed further light on its importance. 

Why Your Business Should Consider Using DevOps

To compete in the digital age, your business must become highly adaptable. DevOps comes from a wide range of philosophical and technical practices. Employing these practices and closely monitoring DORA metrics such as Deployment Frequency and Lead Time for Changes enable your development and operations teams to work together more efficiently.

There are 4 key benefits of DevOps to consider:

1. Speed of Delivery

The speed with which your business releases software is crucial. Your speed of delivery is especially impactful on overall customer satisfaction. DevOps helps to boost your speed while still prioritizing customer needs.

2. Scalability

DevOps uses an Infrastructure as Code method for software lifecycles. This method enables management throughout all stages of a lifecycle. Plus, it helps to keep development manageable as the business grows.

3. Greater Collaboration

Removing barriers to collaboration is a primary goal of DevOps. DevOps relies on strong teamwork between development and operations teams. This helps work environments to be much more collaborative and productive.

4. Continuous Delivery

Software deliveries need to be just as frequent as they are fast. DevOps ensures continuous deliveries and boosted recovery from failure.

DevOps ultimately helps your business to better manage and optimize development lifecycles. In turn, this helps to create a more productive and cross-functional work environment.

Four Steps for Implementing DevOps

When it comes to using DevOps at your own business, there are many factors to keep in mind. 

The following four steps will help you to overcome the main obstacles when implementing DevOps. For each of these steps, we will elaborate further and include actionable tips for you to follow.

It can be very useful to also connect with an experienced team of DevOps engineers when starting out. Having a DevOps expert on hand to help build your own DevOps strategy will help ensure all your bases are covered. 

1. Remove Internal Collaboration Barriers

Collaboration is a core component of DevOps. For this strategy to work it is fundamental to ensure your team has clear lines of communication. DevOps utilizes all areas of a business to enable continuous delivery and development. This means your teams will need to work across departments and embrace cross-functionality. 

A good strategy to pair with DevOps is Omnichannel communications and development. With an Omnichannel strategy, you heighten your business’s ability to share information. Making sure all services available across all channels of communication improves customer satisfaction. Your teams also learn to work together more efficiently.  

There are three key reasons to focus on developing an Omnichannel strategy:

Reduced Operational Costs

Omnichannel strategies make good use of AI and predictive technology. This helps to automate many customer interactions and essential tasks. As a result, the operational cost of customer service can be greatly reduced. 

Improved Customer Service

Customers have come to expect personalized experiences. Universally accessible products and services give customers a sense of personal choice.

Decreased Wait Times

As your business scales up, so does your contact with customers. You will have more customers waiting to hear back from you as the business grows. With an omnichannel strategy, you can ensure much faster response times.

Making your products and services accessible across all channels is key. Whether they are calling, shopping online, or visiting in person, customers come first. Plus, employees will be better equipped to meet the customer’s needs. 

2. Migrate to the Cloud

To successfully use DevOps, your business is going to need its own server and network. Businesses use private servers for sharing and updating information. Having a server specifically for your business helps keep your entire team up to speed. 

However, setting up a physical server and infrastructure in an office is costly. Plus, maintaining the equipment can be both time-consuming and frustrating. Luckily, there is an easy and widely-used solution for this issue: the cloud.

Cloud computing has become increasingly popular over the past decade. Rather than using physical equipment, the cloud is entirely virtually based. This eliminates the need for businesses to invest in expensive equipment.  

There are 3 key benefits to migrating your business operations onto the cloud:

Centralized Information

The cloud stores information and files in one central location. Because this is a virtual location, authorized personnel can access it at all times. As a result, your team can collaborate even when they are not in the same office space.

Increased Scalability

DevOps inherently works to increase your scalability. When operating from the cloud, this scalability sizes up even more. The cloud can easily handle fluctuating business levels and traffic. 

Greater Accessibility

The cloud helps support both your customers and employees. Your team can constantly monitor software development in real-time. Meanwhile, your customers have satisfactory access to their accounts and purchases.

The cloud and DevOps are truly an optimal pairing. Migrating to the cloud will enable your business to take your services and products to the next level. 

3. Follow the Agile Principles for Development

DevOps deals directly with the overall culture of a business. Agile is a separate but closely related method that focuses on project developments. 

Agile inherently helps to enable DevOps. While DevOps works to create an end-to-end solution, Agile helps bridge the gap between development and design.

The Agile methodology is made up of 12 main principles:

• Always prioritize customer satisfaction with continuous deliveries
• Welcome changing requirements even in the late stages of development 
• Deliver working software frequently and keep the timescale as short as possible
• Encourage business people and developers to work together daily
• Utilize motivated team members and provide them with trust and support
• Prioritize face-to-face exchanges of information between your team
• Use working software as the main measurement of progress
• Create processes that promote sustainability and can maintain a constant pace
• Pay continuous attention to both technical excellence and good design
• Simplify the work process to minimizing the amount of work need to reach the desired result
• Self-organizing teams produce the best results
• Carry out team reflections and analyses at regular intervals

Together, DevOps and Agile help you to create an incredibly customer-centric experience. 

4. Get Feedback from Your Audience and Community

Every industry is different. Depending on what area of business you fall into, you will face differing customer expectations. A crucial element for implementing DevOps in your business is to ask for feedback. The best answers about what is or is not working will come directly from your customers.

Moreover, your employees will go through an adjustment period as well. As they learn how to operate under new DevOps guidelines, it is important to ask them for feedback as well. 

The key to creating a highly collaborative environment is to encourage communication. Letting your team know you are seeking out feedback and willing to hear them out is fundamental. 

Final Thoughts

The world only continues to become more digitally oriented. As this technological evolution progresses, it is more important than ever for businesses to embrace DevOps.

DevOps combines both technical and philosophical elements of software development. In doing so, the methodology impacts both the capabilities and culture of a business.

Implementing DevOps into your own business structure is essential. It will help your team to become more collaborative and embrace a customer-centric perspective. 

DevOps is the key to providing faster and continuous deliveries without sacrificing quality. If you are looking for a reliable system to help boost your digital success, then DevOps is for you.

Paras Kela

Paras Kela is a highly skilled SaaS content writer with over 7 years of experience in the IT field. His expertise lies in simplifying complex technical concepts for easy comprehension. With a portfolio of over 100 high-quality blogs covering various SaaS topics, Paras’s writing style is engaging, informative, and SEO-friendly, ensuring maximum effectiveness. He continuously updates his skills and knowledge to stay current with industry trends, making his writing relevant and reliable.