Before understanding the benefits of DevOps, we need to understand the basics. DevOps is the latest trend in the Software industry today. As more and more teams are adopting agile it is important to know the correlation between Agile and DevOps.
Here are the top 8 benefits of DevOps worth understanding before we move further into this space:
Benefits of implementing Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery offers the following benefits:
Reduced overall risk
As the project is continuously built and integrated, defects in the Code are found and fixed at the early stages of the development. This helps in reducing risk and rework because the majority of the problems are fixed as and when they occur.
Also, it becomes much easier to create complete builds of the project very often as they are done on a daily basis rather than once in a fortnight or so. Most developers have their own project set-ups on their machine.
Because the build is created on a Centralised CI (or build) environment, it reduces dependencies on environment hardware set-ups.
Reduced human errors by Automating Repetitive tasks
Converting the process of manual repetitive tasks (whenever applicable) into an automated system eliminates probabilities of missing out on certain steps and reduce human error.
It also allows developers to focus on what day are good at in the project and making the task/work a better experience.
Continuous creation of usable software
At any point in time, the usable build can be created, meaning designers or developers do not have to depend on other teams for a new version of the software.
Depending on the type of CI environment, a new and working build should always be available and has to be up-to-date.
Improved project visibility
By using CI, stakeholders will have a better idea of the existing status of the project. They will get information about-
- The time required for creating a stable build or creating builds.
- The current version of the build.
- Status of the last build instance and deploy jobs.
- Current problems and issue areas.
Build Failure Detection using Automated Developer Testing
Developers who write tests more often use some X-Unit based framework such as JUnit or NUnit. These tests can be automatically executed from the build scripts. CI enables automated regression tests to be run on the entire Codebase whenever a change is applied to the software.
Implicit Enforcement of Coding standards
Coding standards are a set of guidelines that developers must adhere to while working on a project. In many projects, a manual process is performed through Code review. CI can run the build scripts to report on adherence to the coding standards by running a suite of automated Static Analysis Tools that inspect the source Code against the established standards whenever a change is applied.
Refactoring for Easy to maintain Code
It is the process of changing the software system in such a way that it does not modify the external behaviour of the Code and yet improves its internal structure. It makes the Code easy to maintain and identifies potential problem areas at every build.
Frequent releases
It allows the tests and uses to get working software to use and review as often as required. CI works well with this practice. Once a CI system is implemented, release can be created with minimum effort.
