DevOps - An Overview Skip to main content

DevOps - An Overview

DevOps, an extension of agile software development methodology, lays emphasis on communication, collaboration, and integration among various stakeholders in the software development process, i.e. development, QA, and operations.  The two key components of DevOps practice are Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery.

Continuous Integration is a key component of agile practice that ensures software is built and tested regularly and release bug-fixes rapidly. It requires members of a team to integrate their work frequently on a daily basis. Each check-in is then verified by an automated build, which allows early detection of defects. Since Continuous Integration identifies defects early in the development, defects are usually less complex and easy to resolve. Employing Continuous Integration tools and automation testing tools is typical in a DevOps cycle.

Continuous Delivery is the concept that takes Continuous Integration to the next level and extending agile practice beyond development in a DevOps cycle. Continuous Delivery plays an important role in today’s age of agile. Continuous Delivery makes it possible to constantly adapt software corresponding to user feedback, changes in business strategy and shifts in the market. In a Continuous Delivery process, all the teams (test, support, and development) collaborate and work closely to automate and streamline the build, test, and release cycles. Successful Continuous Delivery process results into shortened iterations, minimized risks, reduced costs, and accelerated time to market by frequent releases. However, a smooth, flawless automated Continuous Delivery process is difficult to realize.

Continuous Testing plays a crucial role in Continuous Delivery. It implicates usage of methods and concepts of agile development for the testing and QA process, offering more efficient testing process. Continuous Testing needs automated end-to-end testing solutions that integrate existing development processes while excluding errors and enabling continuity throughout SDLC.

As DevOps encourages a high level of coordination among various teams in the development value chain, at times, it erases the boundaries of various roles. It requires everyone to contribute across the value chain as and when needed. Therefore, a developer can configure deployments, QA engineers can configure automation test cases, and deployment engineers can add test cases to the QA repository. Together, all of them are responsible for the quality, and must adhere to the timelines of all deliverables.

The following initiatives from different functions of software development form part of Continuous Testing:

  • Development teams should begin Continuous Testing with testing performance and functionality of the code that they developed. They may utilize open source tools such as Selenium for testing. Tests can include functional, performance, UI, API and more along with regression tests to ensure a comprehensive test coverage. However, tests should be easy so that developers can create and execute them on their own.
  • DevOps teams have to configure a Continuous Integration environment so as to use the appropriate tests. Developers receive an automatic message in case of any build failures. They need to conclude the Continuous Integration process as fast as possible.
  • QA testers need to ensure that tests run in parallel in order to keep the process moving.
  • Each and every release needs to pass an acceptance test on deployment conducted by the Operations team.
  • In post-production phase, operations managers use a few monitoring tools to test the application continuously to monitor the efficiency of apps. A wide-ranging set of tests can run 24/7 that can send automatic failure alerts.

Continuous Testing, when implemented diligently, allows flawless continuity in the delivery cycle. Integrating a fully automated Continuous Testing process into the SDLC is the most effective solution for a successful Continuous Delivery process.

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