Why Kapernikov loves DevOps (and why you should too)

Published on: June 15, 2021

At Kapernikov, we like to follow a DevOps approach in many of our projects, whether it’s software development, project management or change management. DevOps is a development philosophy that not only leads to faster delivery, but it also incorporates constant customer feedback. But how does DevOps work exactly? And what does it mean for your company?

For the unknowing, DevOps seems to be just another one of the many fancy acronyms in the world of software development. But relax, we are not going to bombard you with more acronyms than necessary. In fact, DevOps is not even necessarily about software development.

In the word DevOps, you can recognize the words development and operations. Those are exactly the departments that DevOps is targeting, because the philosophy tries to bridge the distance between the two, break down the typical silos that can be found in many companies, and focus on collaboration.

From Agile to DevOps

DevOps started from the Agile movement, which has permeated so many areas of businesses since the early 2000s. The Agile movement promoted an iterative, flexible way of working and the ability to constantly adapt to business and customer needs. It was a reaction against the often rigid, linear waterfall workflow, in which one team develops something fully before handing it over to the next team. Failing in a waterfall model often meant doing expensive fixes, because it was difficult to go back to previous stages of development.

With a strong focus on collaboration, Agile has managed to change the way software development is done for good. And yet, the silos of developers and operational specialists are sometimes hard to break down. In practice, these silos are still kept alive and developers still hand off code to the operations specialists to deploy and support. Agile development teams can indeed deliver work in shorter time frames, and they therefore increase value. But that value is only delivered when it is in production, when it is in the hands of actual users. This is why it is important to connect the “development” team with the “deployment” (operations) team.

DevOps is a philosophy that promotes collaboration between operations and development specialists in order to come to better results, whether it’s a new piece of software or another project.

This is where DevOps comes in. DevOps is not about software development tools. Much more than that, it’s a philosophy that focuses on collaboration between operations and development specialists and teams in order to come to better results, whether it’s a new piece of software or another project. DevOps creates a risk-free environment to manage change beyond the scope of software development alone.

Continuous integration, continuous delivery

In contrast to the linear waterfall model, DevOps works with a never-ending, iterative loop through which engineering teams can continuously improve. This way, teams go through different stages, from planning to monitoring, and then go back to the beginning to start a new loop. While they do that, they take into account customer feedback that was collected in the previous loop.

This is also called the CI/CD (continuous integration / continuous delivery) pipeline and it’s one of the best practices to implement and deliver code changes more frequently and reliably.

Continuous Integration means that teams implement small changes and test and validate frequently.
Continuous Delivery is an extension of Continuous Integration which automates the process of deploying a new build into production.
Continuous Deployment is a more advanced version of Continuous Delivery. Here, the manual step of approving new releases into production is removed and each build is automatically deployed into production.
Last but not least, Continuous Feedback refers to the continuous customer feedback loop that leads to developing a better product. Based on feedback from customers, stakeholders and even analytics, new features and fixes can be released as quickly as possible.

The emphasis is on making small, incremental changes, collecting customer feedback much faster, and as a result delivering better results more quickly.

This way of working means that there is an emphasis on making small, incremental changes, collecting customer feedback much faster, and as a result deliver better results more quickly by continuously improving them. DevOps focuses on fixing one problem at a time, not all problems at the same time.

DevOps is a culture

More than anything else, DevOps is a company culture that focuses on people, not processes or tools. First and foremost, DevOps promotes collaboration between teams and departments, so that great results can be achieved. It’s about establishing a great work environment that fosters respect and creativity, and where people can be happy. This may sound a bit wishy-washy, but at Kapernikov we can testify that happy engineers deliver better results.

Not surprisingly, the personality type that thrives the most in a DevOps environment is the T-shaped specialist. This specialist may have a deep knowledge in one field, but s/he still has a helicopter view on other departments or specialists that relate to his/her work.

Why it pays to work the DevOps way

DevOps may not be for everyone. But if you implement the DevOps principles in your workflow, it can bring great benefits.

DevOps keeps you competitive. While working according to these principles, DevOps enables you to increase deployment frequency and accelerate delivery at a lower cost.
Failure is always a possibility, but when it happens, it should not mean the end of your project. DevOps prepares your organization to deal with failure and, instead of being paralyzed by it, you can use failure to learn from it and to adapt accordingly.
DevOps realizes progress in short iterations. Working this way encourages people to explore more and to experiment free from pressure. This way you can make mistakes with lower risk, learn and move on much faster.