To start elaborating on that, let’s first put everybody on the same page by trying to briefly explain what this soundy word “DevOps” really means… and well, that is not quite easy, is it?
So, let’s start by the name that combines DEVelopment with OPerations and it started over a decade ago as more of a movement than an actual position. The frenetic rhythm of the modern tech world has clients demanding an ever faster pace from the developers, delivering quick changes to always be a step ahead of the competition, while maintaining a system that is stable and reliable, free from outages and interruptions. It was quite hard for the companies to push one side without getting the other side short. DevOps was then created to solve this dilemma, integrating the software development with the deployment, creating a single automated workflow with a common focus on delivering fast, with high quality and maintaining the system stable. The whole thing about this movement was the agility of processes , encouraging a faster pace from the developers and making them experiment and iterate commits much more instead of doing a major single dump after a long period of time.
Does this sound familiar? Yup, this seems quite similar to the Agile methodology. So, Is DevOps a methodology as well? Yes… and no — because it is so much more.
As Jayne Groll (CEO of DevOps Institute) once said “DevOps is a recipe that relies on ingredients from three major categories — people, process, and automation”. These three words are the foundations that combine the development team and the IT team to be synced and collaborate throughout the entire software development cycle so that the whole process keeps always in motion, employing continuous delivery, continuous integration and continuous testing. Like in Agile, this continuity is a key element for the success of this mechanism.
All this conceptual mist around DevOps is quite interesting, but how can it be applied to one individual, one role? Is it fair to coin the idea of DevOps in one engineer when we said before that pretty much all the organisation is working the same way? This question doesn’t have a consensual answer, being that the title of DevOps Engineer describes a different way of engineering. While maintaining responsibilities regarding coding and scripting/automating, their main focus is on the process and on guaranteeing the perpetuous motion of the development/integration cycle.
What is all this DevOps hysteria about?
Glad you asked. More and more companies are adopting it — from new-born startups to almost Jurassic enterprises, DevOps is making significant inroads into IT organisations everywhere. The faster feedback, the increased responsiveness and the reduced waste and risk, has been proven to improve system stability and customers satisfaction, as they experience fewer outages and therefore are more loyal, not surprisingly lowering churn rates by a very good margin.
Does it make sense to join, as an engineer, this DevOps hype train?
Absolutely! DevOps is here to stay. The future scope of DevOps is bright and increasing day by day. As more companies are using it, many and many DevOps positions are being created every day, increasing the importance of it inside the organisation and making it one of the best paid IT positions in the market right now. And like the methodology, DevOps positions are all about continuous improvement and creation, being that DevOps is being adapted to many other areas, creating even more job opportunities. Microservices is a great example of that, as more and more companies are transitioning to it. Being intertwined with DevOps, microservices end up acting as a catalyst, as they both promote the idea of operational efficiency, agility, and modularity.
Another area exploding right now is Agile security, as the DevOps infiltrates to create another cool sounding buzzword DevSecOps — incorporating and automating all the processes regarding security much earlier in the system’s development life cycle. And like security, many other areas are getting this early operations patch associated with the development in their processes, from artificial intelligence (AIOps) to machine learning (MLOps), passing by data science (DataOps) to even having something more drastic that completely eliminates the need for operations teams (NoOps). And please, don’t get me started on Kubernetes and Cloud, as it would be a whole new article.
So, in conclusion, if this spiked your interest, you should definitely consider pursuing DevOps in your career. In the meantime, you can attend our upcoming free online session called DevOps Debunked, on September 30 at 6PM WEST, where all your questions will be answered. It’s a warm-up session for the #FWTC21, where the topic will also be touched, with the contribution of top tech experts like Rowdy Rabouw (Front-End Focused Senior DevOps Engineer @ double-R webdevelopment) and Steve Poole (Developer Advocate @ SonaType and DevOps practitioner).
✍️ Rui Martins, B2B Marketing Specialist & Tech Advisor @ Landing.Jobs
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