I’ll have one DevOps, please

Development vs. Operations. These two camps rarely speak the same language. They’ve got the same goal, but they definitely have different ways of reaching the finish line. Developers put new software together, whether applications or services, and hand them over for the Operations team to administrate. The Operations team deploys the developers’ work and operates it in a pre-defined environment. Even though cases deployment is automated, areas of friction may still arise. These areas have increased due to the increasing popularity of agile development. Development is accelerating. What developers consider simple, may be an insurmountable problem for infrastructure. What helps? Burying the hatchet and the two camps on common ground.

That common ground is the magical abbreviation DevOps, the connection of Development and Operations. “This connection creates new value. DevOps is often the answer to the problems that IT faces in the new millennium. It’s truly a different perspective of how technology arises, operates, and is implemented while maintaining maximum stability and not impacting the end user,” explains Vojtěch Kijenský, the Lead DevOps developer at Cleverlance.

New role, new world

We can envision DevOps as a new role in the world of technology that aims to help developers in development, integration, and the quick handover to Operations. Script automation is preferred. As a middleman, DevOps brings the two tech camps together. “Releasing new software used to take several hours or even the entire day, and it rarely went off without a hitch. If a problem arose, we had to start all over. DevOps allows us to work and respond within seconds,” explains Kijenský. “There are clear procedures and rules during the process, narrowing the room for error. Thanks to automation, errors due to carelessness – the human factor – minimized.”

We can also imagine DevOps as a cookbook with scripts as individual recipes. “We’ve got the ingredients and the instructions. The cookbook is readable and easy to use. And thanks to this, we in IT can say that we’re really making a better and tastier world,” laughs Kijenský.

Clear rules

“For developers this means that we offer them an environment in which their code will be processed. Each of them knows which code will be accepted, which rules must be followed. Then come several fully automated steps: the source code is tested to see if it corresponds to the expected level of quality or contains any new bugs, or if the new code violates any rules,” explains Kijenský. “The length of each line is also checked to make sure the code is easy to read. Then the code is automatically compiled and tested as a whole, which is always such a tense moment in development,” he says, adding that this may be followed by integration and functional testing. This means that testers don’t have to spend time waiting for the project to be delivered to the environment.

If the project meets all quality and functionality expectations, it moves on to a higher environment that only verifies the delivery method. This is the pre-production phase. “The final phase is to designate the project fit for production deployment. In most cases this is also automated and after the project is designated fit, the scripts take care of the rest.”

Change? Didn’t notice

According to Kijenský, all this makes it possible to quickly make developers’ work live. “The user doesn’t even notice that a new version is out unless someone points it out. Two versions can also work alongside each other, which we switch out only at the end,” Kijenský says. “When I notice a bug, I can fix it before the end user even has a chance to notice, or I can revert the previous version. In seconds. We’ve got scripts for that, too. That’s what I call modern development.”

One major client that correctly discovered the incredible potential of DevOps and where the role of DevOps has already proven successful in application deliveries is the Czech carmaker Škoda Auto, Vojtěch Kijenský explains. “Companies learn this method of development and start to trust it. It’s always best to demonstrate it in practical use and show what added value the company gets from it. Being able to speak with both development and operations – that’s still quite novel expertise,” Kijenský adds. The Volkswagen subsidiary uses the DevOps environment to develop connected car platforms.