There was a time when companies would develop an entire product from the ground up, test it, fix it if there exist any bugs, and then ship it to a customer base. The process from scratch to finish would take months on end, if not years. Until the product was shipped to the customer base, the customers would not know if the product was exactly what they needed. Simultaneously, the product managers would not know if the product would hit the nail with their customers.
The times have changed now, with customers wanting to be part of the product development. They would want to update the developers of their wants and requirements. They would wish to have constant innovation and up-gradation to the existing software or application. This requires the power of DevOps solutions.
DevOps solutions combine the power of technology and the inherent development culture to deliver products regularly based on the users’ needs. It is not a single iteration, but a continuous process of developing, testing, fixing, deploying, more fixing, and so on, until a stable market fit is achieved. One of the famous quotes on DevOps solutions, by a leading enthusiast in the field, Jez Humble, states, “DevOps is not a goal, but a never-ending process of continual improvement.”
So what does DevOps Do?
Building on customer satisfaction
DevOps solutions usually involve advanced methods to find bugs and fix them in a real-time environment before a user is affected. There is also the potential to improve the functionality and performance of a product with customer reviews and feedback. An example of this can be the app store beta programs for various end-to-end applications. Constant up-gradation and improvements eventually lead to customer satisfaction and a perfect market fit.
Change in software corporate culture
The traditional processes and work ethos broke with the advent of DevOps solutions in the work field. Continuous collaborations between different teams in an agile environment boost the overall process. It also hastens the individual steps of developing, testing, fixing the bugs, and deployment.
Higher productivity
This is a by-product of having fewer bugs to fix. Using DevOps solutions ensures the reduction of code errors by 3x times, which can also be fixed in the nascent stages of product development. This saves a ton of time, resources, and capital, thereby enabling higher productivity. The deployment also occurs 200x more frequently with a satisfied team at the end of the day.
How does MicroServices Help in DevOps?
We know that every increment or update in a small module of a piece of software requires an entire app-version to be released, using or rewriting the application architecture. With companies pushing toward DevOps solutions, this became a massive problem in terms of productivity.
With the help of microservices, a product’s components are built and deployed individually. Although they are not all deployed in a single package, these units communicate and conjoin with each other using RESTful APIs. Therefore, to make a change in functionality, the individual component would be modified and deployed, without writing a whole app version again from scratch. This led to a faster and more agile process of development and market-fit products.
Some of the Features of Employing MicroServices in DevOps:
Easy fixing of bugs and errors
It has become easy to identify and isolate an error and rectify it with minimum maintenance and rework, which doesn’t affect the user’s experience of the application. Combining DevOps solutions with microservices ensures a rapid succession of successful iterations of code and deployment.
Tighter collaboration between various teams
There is a cross-functional attitude in building and working on a product. Agile processes are easily adapted, making it easier to operate and deploy with maximum customer satisfaction.
Decentralized management
Monolithic application architectures depended on a central database for all its services and actions. This has been discarded as a common practice with each microservice having its database, thus decentralized management.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we can say that the landscape of software development and testing has changed with the advent of DevOps solutions and MicroServices.
