9 Benefits of DevOps for Businesses

DevOps is becoming increasingly popular in the IT world, helping businesses keep up with the fast-paced tech environment and deliver high-quality outputs. Using a combination of software development and operations, DevOps enables teams to deliver software, identify issues and fix bugs efficiently, without the common pitfalls of traditional development models. Let’s take a closer look at how DevOps benefits businesses and their teams…

• What are the main problems with the traditional software development lifecycle?
• Top 9 DevOps benefits for businesses
• Benefits of DevOps for key stakeholders

What are the main problems with the traditional software development lifecycle?

• Siloes leading to bottlenecks: The traditional software development life cycle (SDLC) keeps developers, testers and maintenance teams separate as they perform their roles one after the other. This leads to a lack of communication between the different teams, which can result in miscommunications and a substandard product.

• High risk of errors due to poor testing processes: The classic SDLC method involves testing being carried out individually, rather than continuous testing at each stage of development. A lack of continuous testing can lead to issues going undetected until later stages, such as post-release bugs, and take much more time and money to fix.

• Inefficient feedback loop: Siloed teams can often mean that there is a disconnect between development, testing and the end customer. As such, there can be a lack of feedback and transparency, which can result in a product that is misaligned with user needs. This can require more time and effort for additional reworks to address customer feedback later in the process.

• Slow delivery for fixes: Following on from the previous point, a lack of transparency can lead to late fixes and missed deadlines.

Top 9 DevOps benefits for businesses

DevOps can offer a range of benefits, including technical, cultural and business advantages. Here, we’ll run you through some of the main DevOps benefits.

1. Speed up development times

As touched upon briefly above, adopting a DevOps environment can help improve your development delivery times, which will both boost customer satisfaction and help your businesses outperform competitors.

2. Stabilise the work environment

By implementing a steady and structured operational model, you can stabilise the work environment and maintain productivity, as you also keep on top of fixes and updates.

3. Continuous product delivery

Unlike traditional delivery methods, the stable DevOps environment ensures the continuous delivery of products and solutions. Instead of one big release, DevOps enables a team to focus on one feature at a time and deliver a series of releases with time to make changes or amends on an ongoing basis.

4. Improve product quality

Improving collaboration between the development team and IT operations can offer more opportunities for frequent feedback and can help improve product quality. It is easy for a development team to fixate on solely producing a functional product and forget about the end user. The DevOps model allows the team to put themselves in the customer’s shoes and deliver the best possible product in smaller releases.

5. Introduce automation to the development process and make more room for innovation

Automation can save teams hours of work. Starting with the routine processes of your releases, such as testing and writing specifications, or any processes that would be beneficial to your team. Remember not to create technology for the sake of it and build tools that are valuable to you. By automating these tasks, you will free up more time for more important work and pave the way for more innovation.

6. Efficient problem-solving

One of the most important benefits of DevOps is ensuring quick and effective technical problem-solving. An effective feedback loop is critical for ensuring problems are solved as soon as possible, preventing customer satisfaction from dropping. Open communication plays a huge part in this.

7. Boost productivity

The transparency that DevOps offers through breaking down silos and encouraging collaboration allows for improved communication and, as a result, increased productivity.

8. Reduce production costs

With a streamlined development process and efficient team collaboration, businesses are able to cut down on managerial and overall production costs.

9. Improve project scaling

DevOps contributes to improved project scaling and more effective communication between teams, resulting in streamlined processes. This minimises production disruptions and creates a stable environment for upscaling with minimal risk.

Benefits of DevOps for key stakeholders

Each stakeholder will have different priorities and business goals, which means they will want different outcomes from DevOps.

IT Managers are concerned with improving internal processes, so would be interested in the following benefits of DevOps:

• Lower risk of defects
• Decreased cost of release
• Improved software output
• Lower investment costs
• Improved fix times
• Increased frequency of releases, including new features and fixes

On the other hand, CTOs and CIOs are focused on the people-centric elements and would be keen to see these benefits:

• Improved adaptability
• Increased collaboration and breaking down silos
• Happier teams and higher job satisfaction
• Higher employee engagement
• Improved process management
• Faster fixes earlier on in the process
• More opportunities for professional development

Whereas, CEOs are mostly interested in the business outcomes and ROI, so would like to see the following outcomes:

• A higher quality output
• High customer satisfaction
• Decreased production costs
• Reliable and scalable IT infrastructure
• Improved productivity
• Increased ROI

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