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DevOps, the need for change

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DevOps, the need for change

I'm sure you've heard on different forums about DevOps and the benefits of this methodology to software development. But as always when a new trend arrives, one of the doubts we have is whether companies will bet on its implementation. DevOps, an English acronym for Development & Operations, is a methodology that is revolutionizing the way software is developed, not only at a technological level but also at an organizational level, since it focuses on the collaboration and communication of people from different areas that are involved or committed to software development. Together they cover the entire software cycle, providing faster, more reliable and higher quality processes.

The ultimate goal of DevOps is to minimize the risk of delivery changes and thus provide greater value to customers and the business.

Adapting to market needsThe insurance sector demands products immediately in order to respond to customer needs, so competition among companies in the sector is based not only on offering the best product at the best price, but also on offering what the customer requires quickly and efficiently. That is why many companies have been betting for some years on the use of agile methodologies in their development teams, but after the experience gained from being able to participate in these teams, I believe that this is not enough, and it is necessary to take a further step at the organizational level to improve two points that are repeated in most projects:

  • The existence of silos in the different departments involved in the definition and execution of the projects means that each department is responsible for ensuring its priorities, making minimal use of communication and collaboration between them. This situation causes the Time to Market to be high, since sometimes we find that the development team works from some requirements defined by the operations department, but when the developed product is delivered and the operations department comes into action to validate it, it is found that the product does not adapt to the needs due to a bad definition or a bad understanding of the initial definition, which implies to make developments again.
  • The number of manual processes to carry out the tasks of testing and deployment is still high, which generates a large investment of time to perform these tasks, with a high probability of human error. As these manual tasks require a lot of time, the decision is made to minimize the number of deployments of new developments; this makes the response time to business needs not optimal.

Cultural ChangeWhen implementing DevOps, we first need to address a major cultural change. The traditional organizational model that we are used to seeing, organizes the people involved in software development by specialties: development team, quality team and operations team. This form of structure means that each team is oriented to one part of the value chain, has its own priorities due to the existing silos, and there are dependencies of some teams with others to address certain tasks.

DevOps proposes to have an integrated structure, where the team is composed of people from different specialties and the whole team is guided by the same purpose: orientation to the final client and flexibility to make adjustments to the needs, this way structuring the teams gives us the following advantages:

  • Teams guided by a single purpose.
  • Simpler, business-oriented organization.
  • Integrated end-to-end equipment, not "coordinated".
  • Autonomy at the level of technological components.
  • Autonomy in decision making.
  • The whole team contributes to the improvement and dissemination of knowledge.

In order to achieve this integrated team structure, a major cultural change is needed, which will ensure that the following values are achieved at all levels: collaboration, transparency, trust and motivation

Process Automation Automation plays a key role in ensuring quality in software deployment processes. Therefore, it is important to automate as much as possible the process of construction, testing and deployment, firstly to achieve reusable processes that minimize the incidents generated, and secondly to increase the frequency of deployment of new versions of the product, thus going from deploying every two weeks, to get to release new versions of the product daily. benefits to the business:

  • Reduction of Time-to-Market.
  • Faster profitability of the developed software.
  • Lower cost by reducing dedicated resources and working hours.
  • Greater security when making changes.
  • Simpler deployments without the need for technical knowledge.

Implementing DevOps is a race to the bottom, as we are faced with eliminating the existing silos in the company for years, using new tools and automating existing processes, but the benefits it brings in terms of generating quality software in less time has a direct impact on business and customer satisfaction.

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