With the evolution of DevOps, the knowledge gap between software & the infrastructure engineer is fading day by day. Consider the typical Change Request or CR handling process for instance.

In previous days, a customer was bound to use email or ticket submission with the helpdesk system. As soon as the development work is completed for the concerned CR, the solutions are conveyed to the testing team who deploys the solution after a thorough inspection of the solution. If the solutions are yet not good enough, the feedback is shared with the developers and modifications are made until the proper resolution.

The Three Phases

Basically, there are three phases for the operations team after the software development viz.

1. Post-development phase
2. Testing phase and
3. Post-deployment customer feedback phase

Every step involves various stakeholders that might be internal or external. Manual interventions at each stage of the DevOps system cause damage to the development and feedback loop.

Automation is the lifeline of DevOps

With the influence of integration technologies, we can develop certain tools that could be used by the stakeholders. Some such tools are –

–    BMC Remedy used by the operations team,

–    Rally used by the engineering team

–    Build tools used by the development team

And even testing tools are developed that are useful for the QA team.

The end-to-end automated DevOps process spanning across such tools provides us the power to forge better sync among the teams on the three phases.

The Success Story of Automation in DevOps

Several real-time reports are generated with the help of automation in DevOps providing a stronger and realistic view of everything that is actually happening in a project. Some such useful reports generated by the users are Deployment Frequency, Change Fail Rates, MTTR – Mean Time to Recover and Lead time for changes.

A complete automated infrastructure triggers a faster Turn Around Time (TAT) to the market, depletion of the communication barrier between the development, testing, and operations team, continuous integration, and delivery with better monitoring.

This all reduces the risk factor of human error to a great extent, the overall cost of the process management gets reduced and the team can now work with more focus towards improving the core business and final productivity.

In the end, with the stead of achieving automation across all the flow process, automating workflows improve collaboration between development and operations team. It is a complete solution for a very high level of productivity that contributes to bringing multiple tools from various phases – together from different domains with a faster resolution.