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Thanks to rapid advancements in technology, many businesses are focusing more on growing and developing their IT department to acquire a better understanding of new systems and to harness the full power they offer. Along with technology, customer expectations and needs are evolving and growing, too. Due to these factors, the demand for DevOps integration is higher than ever, as it offers modern businesses a solution to ensure they can fulfill their marketing requirements.

However, the transition of a company to fully utilize what DevOps offers is a journey that will involve several elements, which include culture, technologies, organizational structure, staff habits, and processes. If you want to ensure effective DevOps implementation, you have to ensure there is collaboration between your development and operations teams, which is not only possible, but easy, when you use the following best practices for DevOps.

1. Make Communication a Priority

For proper DevOps implementation, good communication is a must. When there is more than one department that is collaborating and working together toward a specific end goal, proper communication is essential to avoid serious errors, which can also be tracked and found using innovative software like Loggly. It’s also necessary to avoid dead ends at a later date in the project.

A DevOps environment is one that stresses how important continuous delivery is, which means that if proper communication is not in place, it can result in several tasks piling up during the day. If your organization is interested in utilizing DevOps, you must also have an effective and well-planned out communications strategy in place to ensure your employees can share information easily. With smooth and seamless communication, you can also improve your workers operational efficiency while remaining up to date on the most current changes. This will help them avoid mistakes and adapt to changes faster.

2. Don’t Try to Go to Big

The larger the software development project is, the more challenging it will be to finish the DevOps implementation on a set schedule and to test it properly. Many companies are carried away when they begin to work on a bigger DevOps project because they often think it’s possible to add more and more changes without altering the scope of the project, and without care or concern for the testing or deployment phases.

By choosing software changes that are not as large, but doing this more frequently, means you have time to test all software changes and tell people that while it’s not being added now, it will be added soon.

3. Request Daily Check-Ins from Developers

During software development and document management, a huge problem that comes up is that many employees check out code or documentation, work on it for several days, and then fail to check it back in. If someone else tries to work on this, the original programmer is going to be blocked by the software in place, or they may assess an outdated version.

This means it’s necessary for developers to check their code in each day to the trunk after their work is done for the day. Also, any professional that is working on test scripts, test notes, or project documentation needs to check their progress daily, so the entire office is on the same page when it is time to get back to work the next day.

4. Make Sure Human Resources is Sufficient

Many organizations have the misconception that a successful DevOps implementation is something that is possible if proper training is provided for just a handful of people. However, the truth of the matter is that the company requires the entire force of dedicated human resources to pull off this type of large-scale transformation.

This isn’t a task that’s able to be handled by just one employee, regardless of how many workshops they have gone to or how much training they have enrolled in. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the DevOps environment, your organization or company is going to have to ensure there’s a network of professionals who can facilitate the collaborations through several closely-knit teams.

5. Rigorous Testing Required

Before rolling it out for production, each code needs to be tested – repeatedly. The testing needs to be done across several hardware configurations, browsers, and environments.

Why you may wonder?

The answer is simple. What may work perfectly on an Android setup could fail on a Linux box. This means it’s necessary to test everything through the hardware that is being used by your customers and across all the major operating systems. It’s also smart to use beta testing when possible.

6. Scaling Takes Time – Don’t Rush It

If you want to ensure your implementation of DevOps is successful, you need to understand that the process is one that hinges on smaller operations and cycles. Remember, it isn’t possible for employees to simply adapt and adjust from a silo-based culture that is currently found in most organizations to the DevOps culture and environment in a span of just 24 hours. The proper pace is going to ensure collaboration along with trust through your various departments and this is going to allow the entire organization the time needed to get used to the new way that things are being done.

Be sure to test the newfound environments before you decide to implement it throughout your organization. If you try to rush the implementation of DevOps, this culture may wind up backfiring, which can create bottlenecks and break down the process – for most organizations, this isn’t something they are prepared to deal with.

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7. Developer Support is a Must-Have

Make sure you have a development team handy to support your operations and to resolve any type of deployment issues when they arise. It’s important for these individuals to be available throughout the typical workday when tech support and operations may have questions. In exchange for this quality level of service, make sure to reward and appreciate their efforts.

8. Keep a Realistic Schedule for Implementation

There are some companies that presume (mistakenly) that the implementation of DevOps is something that only takes a few months to finish. This usually isn’t the case. It needs to be clear that the company will be undergoing a full-fledged renovation, which is going to require a vast timescale that is typically measured in years not months. Also, make sure everyone fully understands that the journey doesn’t have an end point, as the organization is going to continue to work toward ongoing improvement in processes and efforts.

DevOps Implementation is Easier When You Follow the Tips Found Here

A significantly change in any company or organization, such as the implementation of DevOps isn’t something that can be done on a whim. To be successful, this is something that takes careful planning and that requires everyone in the company or organization to be on board and fully understand what is going on or what will happen.

By reading the information here, business leaders can have a general idea about what they need to do to help ensure the implementation is successful. However, keep in mind, there will be tweaks and adjustments that will have to be made, as no two businesses are exactly the same.