#5 Monitor and respond to changes

Companies need to be quick in responding to changes to succeed in today’s competitive, fast-paced world.

In your company, there are many things that you need to monitor and manage. But when you have too many items on your plate, it can become difficult to prioritize what needs to be done first. One way to solve this problem is by using DevOps.

One of the main drivers for implementing DevOps is scaling and responding quickly to changing business needs and digital disruption. However, with increased customer expectations and technological innovation, DevOps is no longer just about getting software released faster; it’s about providing the level of service expected by customers in today’s digital economy.

It’s about responding to customer’s feedback in the fastest possible way.

#6 Automate security checks with DevOps

Do you feel that a security check should be a part of your release process?

As the world moves towards the skilled use of automation, it seems like security teams struggle to keep up with the increased pace of development. One way it is possible to do so is by making sure that security checks are a part of a DevOps process.

In a traditional software development process, security checks are typically conducted later in the process to ensure the quality of the project. You can try to find them during code reviews, where a security department looks at the code and tries to identify a security issue. Or, alternatively, you can perform penetration testing once the application is live. The purpose of penetration testing is to identify gaps and security loopholes on a particular application that might otherwise go unnoticed. After the vulnerabilities have been found, the developer has to take time to resolve them. The fix can take up to a couple of days, which means your application is exposed before you patch all security issues.

In a DevOps environment, security checks can be conducted earlier in the process. For example, you can usually implement automated checks to verify the code. Then, as part of your build pipeline, you can run those checks to discover any security issues.

Security flaws should be found and fixed as soon as possible in the development process. The early detection and resolution of security flaws help reduce the total cost of ownership.

#7 Use feature flags to manage feature rollouts

Release early; release often.

But what if the feature is big, and it’s not ready to be released after one sprint? It can be difficult to launch new features and keep disruptions to your customers to a minimum, but feature flags can help you with that.

Feature flags allow an individual feature to be turned on and off without deploying a new app version. You can use flags in the code to control the feature state. This makes it possible to release a new app or new version that’s incomplete without requiring a time-consuming build and deployment. Feature flags to be helpful in a few ways:

• • • • • • • • • • • • • They reduce the risk of deployment
                        • They allow you to beta test new features
                        • They allow you to switch features on and off at will
                        • They allow you to roll out a new feature to a subset of users

Conclusion

In this article, I have presented to you seven actionable ways to start using DevOps.

But the most crucial thing about DevOps is: You don’t start with DevOps by introducing new tools to automate the process. 

Instead, you begin with DevOps by building a culture that supports DevOps. Building such a culture requires openness, transparency, and mutual respect between different departments. Work to eradicate silos between various departments and foster internal and external communication. You also need to educate and empower your people. 

Because people are at the heart of every DevOps process.