Are You Running Into Challenges While Setting Up DevOps?

If setting up DevOps isn’t as straight forward as you thought or hoped it would be, you’re not alone. While DevOps has many advantages, it does require a careful implementation approach.

 
Is it worth the effort, and what types of challenges do you need to overcome? Let’s take a look at both of these questions.

Is Setting Up DevOps Worth the Effort?

DevOps isn’t a fad. It was created to address a real problem. Developer and operations teams don’t always communicate well. They also have different goals and approaches. Besides that, if something goes wrong, it’s too easy for each group to blame the other. DevOps was developed to address those issues that can have a big impact on software development and maintenance.

In summary, DevOps is a group of practices, processes, and tools that create a productive environment where developers and operations teams can combine their efforts to reach exceptional outcomes. Some of the key benefits of a DevOps approach include:

• Software is delivered more quickly
• Resources are better optimized
• Security is incorporated into the DevOps process
• Resource scalability is improved
• Company-wide collaboration is improved

 
Overall, it is worth setting up a DevOps environment, and given the growth projections for the market, the move to DevOps is alive and well. In fact, according to recent research, the DevOps market is expected to grow to $37,227 million in 2030 with a CAGR of 20% between the years 2022 to 2030. As you know, a market doesn’t grow at that rate unless the demand is high.

Common Challenges When Setting Up DevOps

Establishing a DevOps environment requires technical and organizational changes that need to be managed carefully. Here are some of the most common challenges you’ll need to overcome.

New Expertise

You’ll need a different set of skills for DevOps and many times your existing teams don’t possess those skills. The challenge is to determine the best way to acquire the talent you need.

One approach is to provide training and education for your existing teams. You’ll need to establish the budget for the training and make plans for backfilling for employees when they’re devoting their time to learning. You’ll also need to evaluate your teams to determine how many team members either have or can develop skills such as solid communication skills and the mindset to work with others to achieve results. It can be difficult to find those skills among your existing teams.

Another approach is to obtain the expertise you need from firms that offer DevOps-as-a-Service and use proven DevOps models. This approach will allow you to accelerate your ability to move to a DevOps environment. Many firms use a hybrid approach, providing existing employees with the right training while augmenting their talent pool with industry experts.

Cultural Change

Prior to implementing DevOps, your developers and operations teams work in very different environments with different goals. In many cases, developers are most concerned about producing functional code, while operations teams focus more on the code’s quality and reliability.

The challenge when you move to DevOps is that you need to change each of those mindsets to establish a DevOps mindset that is common to both teams. It’s important to have senior management support and the right education and training to achieve this change.

New Standards  

DevOps requires new standards that describe how you will implement the new environment. For example, DevOps works based on continuous delivery. If your company hasn’t been using something like Agile development, that continuous delivery will be a new approach for your teams. Your teams will need to understand how continuous delivery is possible while maintaining the stability of existing systems.

Moving to DevOps doesn’t mean that you need to jump into a full-blown DevOps environment overnight. You can take a step at a time and confirm that the new approach is working for you. You may start by addressing the process of source code versioning, for example. Over time you can set the entire DevOps framework in place.

Reorganization

You’ll need to determine the best organizational structure for your DevOps resources. Different models can work, but you’ll need to determine which one is going to work best for your organization. You’ll probably also find that your organization will change as you add team members with different skill sets and when you’ve reached a true DevOps mentality company wide. Here are just some possible approaches.

• Developers and operations stay separate, with a DevOps group in the middle
• Developers and operations stay separate, but they have equal status and excellent collaboration skills
• Create one team, although this only works when the organization is very sophisticated in terms of knowledge and experience
• Operations becomes a consultant to act as a mini web-services provider
• DevOps-as-a-service can be used, especially in initial stages

Integration of Tools

If your development and operations groups use separate tools and measurements, you’re going to have a problem. The two groups need to agree on where they need to integrate the tools and the measurements they track.

This requirement will feed into the culture change you need to achieve. Some employees will be reluctant to give up on the tools they know well, but it’s usually necessary. Some tools will be incompatible, and some may be outdated and won’t support the DevOps framework.

Final Thoughts

DevOps can produce the benefits you need to increase your competitive advantage and help your business grow. But, you need to proceed carefully to ensure that your move to DevOps is successful. Otherwise, it will be difficult or impossible to acquire the benefits that are possible.

If you think DevOps-as-a-Service can help your company reach its DevOps goals, Datavail can help. For example:

• We can provide the additional talent you need while your own teams are getting the training they need.
• Our experts will help you to integrate a DevOps best practices and development model into your development cycle.
• We provide consulting and managed services to make sure you achieve a fully automated deployment process, and can provide support 24/7/365/anytime to monitor the environment, fill in the gaps, etc.

 
If you’re facing DevOps challenges, contact our experts to discuss how we can help you meet your goals.

For more information on how a solid DevOps can improve your AppDev initiatives, download our white paper, Polish Your App Portfolio’s Productivity with DevOps Services.