In today’s digital race, speed and innovation are the key aspects that keep you ahead of the competition. However, traditional development silos can stifle progress. 

Introducing DevOps – a revolutionary approach that smashes these barriers, merging development and operations creating a much streamlined experience. 

But what are the real-world benefits? 

Our DevOps engineers spill the tea on how DevOps has supercharged their work, delivering faster, higher-quality software, and giving them the edge to win. 

Let’s talk about how DevOps can transform your development game!

Benefit # 1 – DevOps Assist in Breaking Down Silos 

One of the best benefits of implementing DevOps at your firm is that it breaks down silos. Teams that have traditionally operated in silos often encounter development roadblocks. When development teams focus on building features that ensure stable operations, it leads to fewer delays and frustrations, with less finger-pointing.

DevOps bridges the gap between open communication and exposes businesses to a culture of shared responsibility. Developers gain a deeper understanding of operational challenges and have a much clearer view of which parts of development are higher priorities. Conversely, it becomes easier for the operations team to delegate priority tasks more effectively to the development team. As a result, developers gain valuable insights and write more maintainable and reliable code. DevOps anticipates issues and proactively addresses them, creating an environment with a better sense of ownership and accountability.

As Gene Kim, a well respected figure in the DevOps community puts it, 

“DevOps is not just about tools; it’s about cultural change and breaking down silos between development, IT operations, security, and the business. It’s about fostering collaboration and shared responsibility for delivering high-quality software faster and more reliably.” 

He co-authored the influential book, “The Phoenix Project,” which uses a fictional story to illustrate the benefits of DevOps practices. 

Benefit # 2 – DevOps Fuels Automation 

A core tenet of DevOps is automation. By automating repetitive tasks like infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and testing, teams free up valuable time and resources. 

DevOps encourages baking security practices into the entire software development lifecycle. Freed from manual tasks, developers can explore integrating security tools and practices into the CI/CD pipeline. It offers DevOps team an edge for early identification of bugs and errors, and easy mitigation of vulnerabilities causing disruptions within the development process. 

Tools like Prometheus which is an open-source technology specifically designed to monitor and send alerts in cloud native environments is a great way to implement automation in development processes. It can collect and store metrics as time-series data, recording useful information with a timestamp. By sending this data to the relevant departments, DevOps can quickly identify bottlenecks and refine the code to deliver optimal speed and software scalability. 

DevOps can also implement automation within the deployment process leading to the creation of robust continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. Several platforms such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or Azure DevOps Pipelines can be leveraged to automate code builds, code tests and code deployment. 

Benefit # 3 – DevOps Add Greater Scalability & Reliability 

DevOps introduces consistency and repeatability into workflows, resulting in improved software delivery and ultimately better business outcomes. 

DevOps advocates for the adoption of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform or Ansible for ensuring consistent and repeatable deployments across various environments. In IaC, server configurations and infrastructure are treated as code. Imagine having to manually set up a new server for each deployment. Not only is it time-consuming, but it is also prone to errors, leading to further development roadblocks. IaC automates this process, guaranteeing streamlined and identical environments for development, testing, and production.

Conversely, code changes are automatically integrated and tested frequently, facilitating early detection and resolution of bugs. With CI/CD, new code is merged with the source code and continuously tested, identifying issues early in the development cycle before they escalate. Consequently, code deployment becomes more reliable, resulting in software solutions that are better, more robust, and meet quality assurance standards.

DevOps also employs version control systems to track changes to code and infrastructure. Such implementations facilitate easy rollbacks, particularly if issues arise during deployment. 

Imagine deploying a new version and encountering a critical bug. Version control allows you to quickly revert to the previous stable version, minimizing downtime.

Benefit # 4 – Improved Communication & Effective Collaboration

Another leading benefit of having a DevOps team depends on factors such as accountability, openness and quick response feedback. As Luca Galante puts it, 

“DevOps was born out of the need to reunite engineering teams and prevent developers from simply, ‘throwing their code over the fence’ to overwhelmed sys admins, who had to figure out then how to deploy it onto their infrastructure.’” 

DevOps fosters a culture of collaboration where development, operations, and security teams work towards shared goals. It necessitates clear communication and transparency throughout the software development lifecycle. Shared dashboards and project management platforms provide everyone with real-time visibility into the development process, reducing ambiguity and miscommunication. 

Also, DevOps promotes the use of a common vocabulary across teams. It eliminates confusion caused by technical jargon specific to each department. Everyone involved understands the overall process and the terminology used, leading to more efficient communication. There’s also a strong encouragement for deploying a culture of continuous feedback. Teams actively solicit feedback from each other throughout the development process. 

It led to early identification of issues and created a sense of ownership & accountability. 

Benefit # 5 – DevOps Help Achieve Shift Left Security 

A key benefit of DevOps is its emphasis on Shift-Left Security, which integrates security considerations throughout the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), rather than treating them as a final step before software deployment. 

DevOps implements automation for security checks and integrates CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), which scans code for vulnerabilities during development, providing immediate feedback to developers. 

This approach leads to effective collaboration between development and security teams, with developers undergoing adequate security training and implementing best security practices. 

It establishes better workflow processes, resulting in error-free code and appropriate security measures from the outset. Shift-Left Security helps streamline the development process by identifying security problems early, thereby avoiding delays caused by security audits at the end of the pipeline. 

Since it enables the integration of security measures at every step, the development team can more easily identify and address security issues early on, preventing delays due to security audits later in the pipeline.

A notable example is of a major online retailer (brand names are kept anonymous for that implemented automated security scans within their CI/CD pipeline. This led to the early identification of a potential SQL injection vulnerability during the development cycle, allowing for a quick fix before it could be exploited by attackers. 

Similarly, a financial service company adopted secure coding practices as part of their DevOps approach, resulting in a significant decrease in security vulnerabilities found during later testing stages.

Benefit # 7 – DevOps Empowers Team Collaboration 

Poor coding practices is something that users often experience when, though they often realize that a software product is poorly coded when it’s all too late. 

DevOps understand that software development is not all about seamless coding implementations. Someone who is not that good at coding can be really good at serving other roles such as team management, time management & resource management. In short, DevOps can find the diverse strengths of each member and help them work upon their strengths. Eventually, they acquire a well-rounded and more effective development unit. 

DevOps are trained in breaking down silos between development and operations. It helps them create a sense of shared responsibility and ownership of the final developed product. 

Benefit # 8 – DevOps Create a Good Organizational Culture 

When you work with a DevOps team, it improves interpersonal relationships which creates inter-departmental trust among key players. 

In this way, DevOps become the source of laying out a better team understanding, what challenges they face and what it takes them to accomplish these tasks. 

Such cooperation not only boosts worker morale, but also increases productivity and results in higher profit gains. Effective networking across different departments also allows to create alternative career paths leading to much well developed products. 

Key Takeaways: 

• DevOps breaks down silos between development and operations teams, fostering collaboration and shared responsibility.
• Automation is a core principle of DevOps, freeing up time for more important tasks and improving efficiency.
• DevOps practices lead to more reliable and scalable software through consistent deployments and early bug detection.
• Improved communication and a shared vocabulary are crucial aspects of DevOps, leading to fewer misunderstandings and a smoother development process.
• DevOps promotes “Shift Left Security” by integrating security practices throughout the software development lifecycle.
• DevOps values the diverse strengths of each team member and creates a well-rounded development unit.
• A DevOps approach fosters a positive organizational culture with better team understanding, trust, and morale.

In today’s cutthroat digital world, speed, quality, and security are the holy trinity of successful software development. But traditional development silos can act like roadblocks, slowing you down and hindering innovation. That’s where DevOps comes in. Here at Branex, we’re passionate about helping organizations achieve their full potential through our expert DevOps services.

By implementing a DevOps approach, you can break down those silos and foster a collaborative environment where development and operations teams work together. DevOps is all about automation, freeing up your team’s time for the creative problem-solving that truly sets your product apart. 

If you’re looking to gain a competitive edge and deliver exceptional results, then DevOps is a strategic move you won’t want to miss. Branex can help you navigate the DevOps journey, empowering your teams and transforming your software development process. 

Let’s unlock your organization’s potential together.