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DevOps Maturity Model

“DevOps isn’t a technology; it is an organizational approach that accelerates the development of applications and eases the maintenance of existing deployments.”

DevOps is also seen as a conscious shift in focus from development to delivery.

By combining development (Dev) and operations (Ops) teams, DevOps promotes shorter iterations through best practices, changes in organization structure and culture, automation and new tools. 

Fueled by investments in software-driven innovation, collaborative & automated application development, operational processes, adoption of microservices-based architectures and associated development processes – enterprises are moving to DevOps at a rapid pace. As a result, industry experts peg the DevOps market to touch $20 billion by 2030. 

What Is DevOps

DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market.

How DevOps Works

Under a DevOps model, development and operations teams are no longer “siloed.” Sometimes, these two teams are merged into a single team where the engineers work across the entire application lifecycle, from development and test to deployment to operations, and develop a range of skills not limited to a single function.

In some DevOps models, quality assurance and security teams may also become more tightly integrated with development and operations and throughout the application lifecycle. When security is the focus of everyone on a DevOps team, this is sometimes referred to as DevSecOps.

These teams use practices to automate processes that historically have been manual and slow. They use a technology stack and tooling which help them operate and evolve applications quickly and reliably. These tools also help engineers independently accomplish tasks (for example, deploying code or provisioning infrastructure) that normally would have required help from other teams, and this further increases a team’s velocity.

DevOps Benefits

Speed

Move at high velocity so you can innovate for customers faster, adapt to changing markets better, and grow more efficient at driving business results. The DevOps model enables your developers and operations teams to achieve these results. For example, microservices and continuous delivery let teams take ownership of services and then release updates to them quicker.

Rapid Delivery

Increase the frequency and pace of releases so you can innovate and improve your product faster. The quicker you can release new features and fix bugs, the faster you can respond to your customers’ needs and build competitive advantage. continuous integration and continuous delivery are practices that automate the software release process, from build to deploy.

Reliability

Ensure the quality of application updates and infrastructure changes so you can reliably deliver at a more rapid pace while maintaining a positive experience for end users. Use practices like continuous integration and continuous delivery to test that each change is functional and safe. monitoring and logging practices help you stay informed of performance in real-time.

Scale

Operate and manage your infrastructure and development processes at scale. Automation and consistency help you manage complex or changing systems efficiently and with reduced risk. For example, Infrastructure As Code helps you manage your development, testing, and production environments in a repeatable and more efficient manner.

Improved Collaboration

Build more effective teams under a DevOps cultural model, which emphasizes values such as ownership and accountability. Developers and operations teams collaborate closely, share many responsibilities, and combine their workflows. This reduces inefficiencies and saves time (e.g. reduced handover periods between developers and operations, writing code that takes into account the environment in which it is run).

Security

Move quickly while retaining control and preserving compliance. You can adopt a DevOps model without sacrificing security by using automated compliance policies, fine-grained controls, and configuration management techniques. For example, using infrastructure as code and policy as code, you can define and then track compliance at scale.

DevOps Challenges

  • Moving from Legacy Applications to Microservices – Moving to a newer Microservices architecture does enable faster development and innovation. But transitioning to microservices doesn’t come without challenges, the most significant one being the increased complexity.
  • Adoption of New Tools & Integrating Them – To harness DevOps effectively, the teams need to face the adoption challenge of deciding on various tools for development, testing and deployment to ensure they all work in an integrated manner.
  • DevOps Governance – DevOps follows stringent governance policies that dictate how much access to the production resources is given to each team. The SLAs clearly define the change control processes and set up for all the systems. This could be another nightmare for companies getting started on DevOps.
  • Managing Multiple Environments – Managing multiple environments is complex and could quickly go out of control. It requires experienced DevOps experts to define the series of predetermined steps to speed up deployment by streamlining development and testing.
  • Securing the Infrastructure – DevSecOps is a specialized subset within DevOps to look at such security measures. DevSecOps introduces security considerations right at the beginning of the development and deployment, making it easy to detect bugs and reduce risk, resource management costs, and more importantly, legal liability.
  • Bottom-up Approach –
    Until DevOps came along, the management had their say on what tools and platforms were to be used. But any good DevOps environment will promote the opposite – it encourages collaboration among developers and operations team members to vouch for what works best for them. This elementary change in work culture could be hard to accept for a few organizations.
  • Building a DevOps Center of Excellence – Very often, critical knowledge is limited to a few key people. Then, when they exit the company, the organization feels the weight of that dependence, and development teams struggle to fill the void. Setting up a DevOps Center of Excellence could help overcome this challenge.
  • Change Resistance – While change is essential for growth, it could be a nightmare for many people who have been doing something in a particular manner. Implementing DevOps, therefore should not be a rushed initiative, it needs to be done with a certain degree of smoothness.
  • Measuring Success with the Right Parameters – Unlike many waves that have happened in the past, the success parameters for DevOps aren’t something that a pennywise CFO should set up. Instead, the success parameters need to be established by seasoned experts who can help you quantify the value you deliver.
  • Implementation Budgets – Implementing DevOps requires budgets and specialized resources. And it would be best if you had a DevOps team to help you estimate the total budget you require for a full transition, as a halfway implementation will only cause friction and challenges.

What Is DevOps Maturity Model

DevOps Maturity Model is a conceptual model that determines where an organization stands in the DevOps course, which direction it is heading, and decides what you need to do to achieve desired outcomes. 

DevOps is not just continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) but a much broader strategy. In addition to CI/CD, culture, testing, architecture, collaboration, and build process, are several other fundamental areas for DevOps maturity that you must focus on when adopting a DevOps approach in your organization.

Phases Of DevOps Maturity Model

As you are now aware of the fundamental principles required for DevOps maturity, the next step is to determine your organization’s current position and which level to ascend to. Below are the 5 phases every organization encounters on the journey to reach DevOps maturity.

Phases Of DevOps Maturity Model

1. Initial Phase

In this phase, you are yet to start adopting DevOps. Dev and Ops teams work separately (traditional environment), and the organization is unaware of the potential benefits of implementing a DevOps approach. Most likely, the software development life cycles are longer. There is no shift-left security strategy and little to no automation, so all testing is done manually. 

2. Basic Implementation Phase

During this phase, DevOps practices are implemented within small teams or small-scale projects but not extended broadly to the whole organization. Automation is happening on a small scale, and cross-team collaboration gets emphasized between the Dev and Ops teams. But in this phase also, security operates as a separate component.

3. Automation Phase

The automation phase, the third level of DevOps maturity, involves more automation to perform essential tasks. Here, agile practices are in action, security scans are integrated into testing throughout the development and deployment process, and new tools and automation techniques are adapted, leading to an organization-wide transformation.

4. Defined Processes Phase

All teams throughout the organization understand and operate according to DevOps practices, and automation replaces all manual processes. During this phase, agile performance metrics get implemented, and results get measured with feedback taken into account. In addition, the product-oriented approach overtakes project-oriented thinking, and security team members are also a part of the product team.

5. Optimization Phase

By the optimization phase, the organization is fully on-board and owns solid DevOps processes and culture. This stage is about optimizing your DevOps, improving CI/CD, and enhancing performance based on data. There are no longer team silos, and the achievements are visible.

Key Factors For Efficient DevOps Maturity Model

Every organization is different, so what defines their DevOps maturity can also differ. Let’s look at some critical factors to consider to achieve an efficient DevOps Maturity Model:

1. DevOps culture

DevOps is not only about technology. It is an approach that requires a culture that brings together different teams where all members work towards a common goal while being aware of their role in this process. Every company targeting DevOps maturity should undergo this cultural transformation as DevOps maturity requires cross-functional collaboration and the unity of every stakeholder, from engineers to executives. Because of this, it also requires proper communication and planning.

2. Automation

Automation minimizes human intervention in software development processes and is the key to continuous integration and continuous delivery. The automation process helps reduce time consumption, save resources, and minimize human errors by automating repetitive tasks in development, testing, and production.

3. Collaboration

Collaboration is one of the most crucial aspects of DevOps maturity that requires understanding each team member’s role and sharing the tools and resources available to reach a common objective. In addition, you must have adequate and open communication within the teams to ensure everyone is on the same page.

4. Continuous Testing (CI/CD)

Continuous testing involves performing tests at each stage of the Software Development Life Cycle to continuously identify and eliminate errors at the earliest possible stage. It is crucial to automate the testing and constantly evaluate and validate the test coverage to achieve perfect harmony between speed and accuracy in deployments.

5. Architecture

It is essential to have an application architecture that suits your DevOps goals for an effective DevOps Maturity Model. Such an architecture minimizes the risk of cascading failures, contains independent modules that function without impacting others, and facilitates fast deployments and easier testing. You need to find the best architecture that complements your DevOps maturity goals and requirements, as no architecture equally suits all the DevOps environments and infrastructure.

6. Build Process

Build processes are vital for DevOps maturity as the team can view the history and determine what has happened during the last execution after each code commit. An efficient build process includes all the status, logs, and artifacts and marks a build as a failure if a fault occurs. For real-time logging in live apps, you can use a special observability tool like Lightrun that enables you to add logs while the app is live, without impacting its performance. 

Final Thoughts

DevOps is a long-term commitment, and it is constantly improving and evolving day by day. Adopting tools that automate and speed up processes is an essential part of it. DevOps Maturity Model helps determine the progress of your organization’s journey in DevOps, making it easier for you to enhance the release rate, improve the organizational workflow, and ensure test accuracy.

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