7 essential best practices to follow when adopting a DevOps model

Source- sdtimes.com

The benefits of DevOps have been talked about for some time now. But a recent report has shown how organizations are reaping the benefits after implementing DevOps.

According to a recent survey sponsored by Google and Harvard Business Review Analytics Services, two-thirds of the respondents that have implemented DevOps have seen benefits that impact their bottom line. Seventy per cent have seen increased speed to market, 67 per cent have seen improved productivity, 67 per cent have seen increased customer relevance, 66 per cent have seen increased innovation, and 64 per cent have seen an increase in product and service quality.

The benefits are clear, but the way to go about actually implementing DevOps isn’t so clear. To make the process easier, Google is sharing seven lessons that they’ve learned and believe are essential to adopting a DevOps model.

1. Pilot a small project: Piloting a small project offers a low-stakes opportunity for mastering key DevOps capabilities. “A few small wins will provide evidence to the rest of [the] organization that DevOps works. Soon others will want to follow suit,” Melody Meckfessel, VP of engineering at Google Cloud, wrote in a post.
2. Be an open-source player: Using open-source tools and engaging in the open-source community can help you stay up-to-date on best practices and solutions. It can also help decrease your organization’s learning curve and speed up release cycles, Meckfessel explained.
3. Embed security in development: Taking care of security issues early on prevents them from being pushed out to production.
4. Apply DevOps best practices: Google recommends companies use Site Reliability Engineering principles to foster collaboration, reduce waste, and increase efficiency. It also recommends looking for ways to improve automation, which can enable higher productivity and free organizations up to focus on important tasks.
5. Provide immersive training: According to Google, people will only commit to change in an organization when they understand why it is happening and are given the resources to implement the new technology. According to Google, three-quarters of the top-performing DevOps teams in the report provide immersive, hands-on training.
6. Establish a no-blame culture: Running blameless meetings in an environment that is built on trust allows team members to learn from their mistakes. Presenting mistakes as opportunities enable coworks to relate to each other and solve problems together, while also preventing that same mistake from reoccuring.
7. Build a culture that supports DevOps: According to Google, the rest of this list is worthless without this last point. “When people feel like they have each other’s backs, they’re more likely to take smart risks; more likely to create; more likely to move faster,” said Meckfessel