In the tech world, there is always something new to learn. As new tools and technologies are developed, we must adapt our workflows to keep up. This is especially true in the fast-paced world of enterprise DevOps. In the era of digital transformation, speed is essential. But getting your applications to market quickly also means ensuring that they’re reliable and scalable.
That’s where DevOps comes in, helping you optimize your development and operations processes for faster releases without compromising quality. If you’re looking to build or improve your enterprise DevOps practice, here are five essential steps to keep your team on track.
Let’s get started!
Step 1: Process is everything
As a company scales, it’s IT demands expand exponentially. That’s why it’s so important to have an organized, process-driven DevOps team in place to drive innovation.
The first step in building an enterprise DevOps practice is to define and document your process. This includes everything from the code commits that are pushed to production, to how you handle errors and rollbacks. Having a defined process will help ensure that everyone on your DevOps team is working towards the same goal, and it enables accountability and QA can proceed in an organized manner.
WATCH: Unlocking DevOps Potential
Step 2: Take advantage of low-code and no-code
Coding everything by hand takes time and, unfortunately, can introduce hard-to-spot errors. No-code and low-code development tools exist to help accelerate the development process by automating common tasks and eliminating the need for traditional coding. This can be a major boon to your enterprise DevOps team, as it can help shorten the learning curve and get new developers up to speed more quickly.
For applications that are building on well-known, established patterns and use cases, starting with no-code and low-code tools can be a great way to get to a minimum viable product (MVP) for testing.
Step 3: Implement intelligent enterprise DevOps automation
To further help accelerate development, consider implementing touchless technologies to automate certain parts of the development cycle. These automation tools can greatly help expedite workflows, but you need to implement them in a thoughtful, strategic way. As enterprise DevOps teams are well aware, “garbage in, garbage out” – and nowhere is this idiom more apt than in the world of IT automation.
When you automate workflows in a smart way, this can help speed the release of new features and improve software quality.
Step 4: Tailor your enterprise DevOps tool stack
A tech team can only succeed to the optimal level of their tools. You need to be sure to integrate them well, and build on a solid foundation. It’s also imperative to train your DevOps team (and other affected teams) properly in how to use their toolset in your specific enterprise business context. This way, they can make smart decisions around configuration instead of settling for out-of-the-box or ‘recommended’ settings. Those recommendations might not work best for your particular use cases. This may mean reviewing and assessing your team’s entire tool stack, including.
- Continuous Integration
- Planning & Collaboration
- Source Code Management
- Build Tools
- Configuration Management
- Security, Testing & Monitoring
Step 5: ITOps Collaboration: Ensuring Support for Your Apps
Oftentimes enterprise DevOps teams create their own processes and the ITOps team has no idea how they work. This can make it difficult to support the DevOps team’s applications, so DevOps must include a step where you document everything for ITOps.
Additionally, DevOps can engage with your company’s cybersecurity team. This will improve your organization’s security as you’ll get feedback on the dev process, allowing you to make improvements before an app is shipped.
The Wrap-Up
If you’re looking to build a successful enterprise DevOps practice, Windward can help. We have the expertise and experience necessary to get your team up and running quickly and efficiently. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you take your company to the next level.
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