When developing a digital product, a big problem is the communication and technical barriers that arise between development and operations. Removing these barriers is the stated goal of DevOps — by the first letters of the two terms. Simply put, DevOps methodology should be understood as a deliberate convergence of employees from different focus areas to create conditions for unifying production and reducing potential barriers. The naivest example of this approach is the need for Development, Operations, and QA staff to work together in the same room — this allows for multidisciplinary functioning almost simultaneously, as shown in Figure 1.
DevOps does not have strictly positive or strictly negative effects on production because it can bring dualistic values. Specifically, among the apparent benefits of this methodology are faster time to market, elimination of communication barriers between departments and optimization of operational efficiency, improved quality of the outgoing product, and reduction of reputational losses. Among others, DevOps helps save time and resources as it requires parallel rather than sequential integration (Fig. 2). On the other hand, DevOps is not without apparent drawbacks. In particular, implementation of such methodology requires retraining of employees and the formation of a new corporate culture since close cooperation with other departments is not always common in companies’ practice. Forming a new culture requires significant time in the initial stages, so that this approach may be less profitable in the short term. In addition, in the case of outsourcing, DevOps can set precedents for reducing corporate data security and contribute to leaks.
DevOps is a methodological framework that can find use in a multitude of digital product or software-related areas. DevOps is particularly useful in areas where responsiveness and speed of change are valued. For example, telecommunications and financial companies, airlines, and nuclear energy-related industries — in such areas, the use of DevOps helps to make quick adjustments and potentially produce a digital product faster (Mathur, 2021). However, the application of this methodology is not limited to the named areas and can be extrapolated to any enterprise where the DevOps philosophy would be applicable, including small businesses.
References
KANDA. (2021). Steps to adopt DevOps in your organization. KANDA Software. Web.
Mathur, A. (2021). 16 popular DevOps use cases & real life applications. upGrad. Web.
Microsoft. (2021). What is DevOps? Microsoft. Web.