Udacity – Become a Cloud DevOps Engineer Nanodegree Program

DevOps is a set of practices to automate the processes between programming and IT teams, all together that they can build, test, and release software quicker and more reliably.

At the enterprise level, the leadership team is focusing more on moving their projects to the DevOps model that benefits their customers in providing quick feedback to the development teams to work on the changes and deliver the desired service/product.

DevOps are on the broader terms is an approach based on lean and agile practices in which development teams, operations, and testing teams communicate and collaborate to deliver the product/service continuously to reach out to the end customer that helps them to seize the market opportunities. This method provides a chance to receive timely feedback and incorporate the changes quickly.

DevOps, as a concept, emphasizes communication, collaboration, and integration between software developers and IT operations to enable faster and reliable deliverables to the end client in reduced timelines. This way, the execution gaps in a project can be controlled, and togetherness can be brought in within the groups working on the project.

Unlike traditional software applications, which are designed with massive data and reliability and can satisfy the customer with one or two releases a year, the current web & mobile application demand continuous delivery and required an intense focus on user experience, agility, and speed that they reach to the market as end-users directly use the system. DevOps enables all these in an organized way with integrated teams and continuous feedback within and between the groups.

DevOps enable faster delivery to the markets, enhanced customer satisfaction, and improved capacity to innovate within the teams. The agile environment enables enterprises to build quality into every individual increment of the application delivered wherein with DevOps; the whole execution process can be streamlined with reliable, fast, and quality products to the market.

Principles of DevOps:

In one of the technical forum’s the following principles of DevOps are published by IBM, and the list is still evolving based on the learnings and practices set up at the enterprise level.

• Develop and test against production-like environments
• Deploy with repeatable, reliable processes
• Monitor and validate operational quality
• Amplify feedback loops

The objective is to allow development and quality assurance (QA) teams to develop and test against frameworks that behave like the production system so that they can see how the application behaves and performs well before it’s ready for deployment. In the same note, automation is necessary to create repeatable and reliable processes.

Unlike traditional monitoring applications in a siloed and disconnected manner at the production end, DevOps suggest pushing the process earlier in the lifecycle to monitor the quality and functionalities at the development and testing phases that provide early warning about operational and quality issues that may occur in production.

Quick feedback and rapid learning from the actions enable fast and reliable deliverables with improved communication within the teams and winning the trust factor of the end customer.

DevOps propose the adoption of the plan, develop, test, deploy, and operate continuously to meet the tight deadlines and to roll out the application to the end market for their feedback for continuous improvement.