DevOps Lifecycle

What Is DevOps Lifecycle?

The desire for quicker and more effective software development led to the DevOps lifecycle. Development, testing, and deployment were carried out in different phases according to the traditional approaches to software development, such as the Waterfall model, which was based on a sequential procedure. This method produced long development cycles with little room for adjustment to shifting needs or market conditions.

As a solution to this issue, DevOps was created, merging development and operations into a single cycle that cooperates throughout the whole software development lifecycle.

The DevOps lifecycle is a process framework that integrates IT operations and software development methods to provide a more effective and efficient software development process. It is a more agile, collaborative, and automated strategy for software development and deployment to enhance the dependability, speed, and quality of software delivery.

DevOps Lifecycle Phases

The main aim of the DevOps Lifecycle is to shorten the system's development life cycle and deliver features, fixes, and upgrades regularly while staying closely aligned with business goals. This lifecycle is split into seven phases, referred to as DevOps Lifecycle Phases.

Each DevOps lifecycle phase repeats multiple times until its objective is completed to provide a pipeline where code may flow quickly while keeping high standards. Let's learn about these DevOps lifecycle phases one by one.

Continuous Development

TheContinuous Development(CD) phase includes the planning and coding of the software. During this phase, we can visualize the entire development cycle while planning, which helps developers to properly comprehend project requirements. Various version control systems are used in this phase to manage and maintain the code for the software.

Some common tools used in this phase are Git, Gradle, Maven, etc. All these tools are used for code development. Git is a distributed version control system frequently used to support source code management, team collaboration, and continuous integration and delivery. Gradle and Maven are build tools that automate the process of downloading dependencies.

Continuous Integration

After the development phase, the next phase is continuous integration(CI). Developers regularly commit code changes to a shared repository, typically using version control systems like Git. These code changes are automatically built and tested in a dedicated environment, separate from the development environment, to ensure that the changes are compatible with the existing codebase and do not introduce new issues or regressions.

A prominent tool in this stage is Jenkins. It retrieves the updated code whenever there is a change in the Git repository and does a build, which creates an executable file. Then this build is received by the test server or the production server.

Continuous Testing

Continuous Testing is the next phase. It involves checking the developed code for faults and defects. Here, quality analysis (QA) is crucial to determine the usability of the generated software. Various tools, like TestNG, JUnit, Selenium, etc., are used for continuous testing. TestNG generates the reports, and Selenium handles the automation testing.

Automation testing saves a lot of time and effort compared to manual testing. This can be done with the help of a Continuous Integration tool called Jenkins. Jenkins automates the continuous testing phase.

Continuous Monitoring

Whenever we build any instrument, software, or hardware, we check its efficiency by monitoring the application. In the DevOps lifecycle phase, Continuous Monitoring is one of the critical phases which allows for monitoring the software and spotting possible problems and areas for development. It enables DevOps teams to identify and address issues early on before they develop into serious situations that impact end users.

In continuous monitoring, metrics like Application performance, server utilization, and user activity are collected and analyzed. These acquired data are used to understand the system's health and the performance of the software. This phase uses tools including Nagios, Splunk, Sensu, ELK Stack, and NewRelic to monitor.

Continuous Feedback

Continuous feedback is a crucial stage in the DevOps lifecycle. It involves gathering feedback from users and systems. During this phase, the DevOps team monitors the software to find any problems, collects feedback, and examines usage data to enhance the software.

DevOps teams can immediately discover problems and make changes by gathering and analyzing data and user feedback. Automated testing, Automated dashboards, etc. are examples of feedback mechanisms. Different tools are also used to gather feedback from customers, like Pendo(product analytics tool).

Continuous Deployment

Software changes are automatically deployed to production environments as soon as they are available under the Continuous Deployment (CD). Any code modifications that pass automated testing are instantly and manually released to production in a continuous deployment environment.

• Development teams often employ a pipeline of automated tests and quality checks to accomplish continuous deployment to ensure that code changes are good enough to be pushed to production.
• Unit tests, integration tests, functional tests, security tests, and performance tests, among others, might be a part of this pipeline.
• Infrastructure as code (IaC) tools and automation scripts are generally used to automatically publish code changes to production after they have passed all of the tests.

For software development teams, continuous deployment has several advantages, including a quicker time to market, increased dependability, and a lower chance of mistakes and failures.

Continuous Operations

Continuous operations (CO) aim to ensure that software programs are consistently reliable and effective in real-world settings. It entails regularly maintaining, monitoring, and optimizing the software program and the infrastructure that supports it.

Continuous operations procedures enable DevOps teams to guarantee that the software application is consistently reliable, available, and functioning, improving user experience and lowering the possibility of downtime or other problems. 

Top DevOps Best Practices

Let's discuss some DevOps best practices to leverage the benefits of DevOps.

Foster a Collaborative Culture

DevOps is all about promoting cooperation and tearing down team silos. To accomplish shared objectives, team members must collaborate and communicate honestly and openly. Developing a collaborative culture involves encouraging information exchange, cross-functional training, and constant feedback loops.

Practice Patience

Iterative processes like DevOps demand endurance and patience. It's crucial to understand that change takes time and obstacles will inevitably be on the road. Teams must be willing to learn from their mistakes, adjust their methods, and be patient and tenacious in their pursuit of continuous improvement.

Set Performance Metrics

Establishing performance metrics is crucial for monitoring advancement and locating potential improvement areas. Metrics should be precise, quantifiable, and pertinent to the organization's objectives. For instance, a DevOps team may monitor the frequency of deployment, the lead time for modifications, and the mean time to recover (MTTR). Teams can find bottlenecks and inefficiencies and make data-driven decisions to streamline operations by routinely evaluating performance indicators.

Have the Right DevOps Toolchain

The software delivery process can be automated by teams using a DevOps toolchain, a collection of tools and technologies. Selecting the appropriate tools for your firm, depending on your unique requirements and objectives, is critical. Continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) technologies, containerization platforms like Docker and Kubernetes, and configuration management tools like Chef and Puppet are some of the tools frequently used in DevOps.

Look For Long-Term Goals

DevOps is a long-term approach. Thus it's critical to consider factors other than immediate benefits. Teams should establish long-term objectives that complement the overarching corporate goals and work towards achieving them. This necessitates a commitment to providing value to customers and a focus on ongoing improvement.

Implement Automated Dashboards

Automated dashboards can offer real-time insight into the process of delivering software. Teams can use this to track progress, spot problems immediately, and make informed decisions. Every team member should have access to automated dashboards, including metrics pertinent to the organization's goals. We use different dashboards like, Infrastructure Monitoring Dashboards, Application Performance Monitoring Dashboards, etc. to get health and performance updates of the applications.

Prioritize Security Practices

Every phase of the software delivery pipeline needs to include security. This entails integrating access controls, vulnerability scanning, and security testing into the development process. Security procedures must be prioritized to safeguard the company against potential security breaches and foster client confidence.