Do We Really Need DevOps for Each and Every Project?

The DevOps collaboration of developers and operation teams makes for a more Agile and efficient deployment structure. But does this work that way in reality?

Today the majority of software development organizations are adopting DevOps culture and there are significant benefits of it. A few of them are:

• Continuous Delivery and Continuous Integration

• Shorter development cycle

• Improve Quality and Reduce cost:

• Stable operating environment:

• Enhanced version control

Each of the benefits above is associated with one of the more DevOps tools. We must understand why DevOps is essential. Do we really need the above features to be integrated with our existing software development life cycle?

You start with the existing development ecosystem using DevOps essentials, and you have hired a DevOps engineer, you start implementing DevOps tools to your current project, but after a few weeks, you observe that stability and delivery of project release are same as before.

With that, the cost of implementing DevOps as well as monthly and yearly charges of that specific DevOps tool has increased.

Something is missing in the above scenario; do you know what is that? It could be project complexity, microservices, selection of right DevOps tools, containerization, or it could be orchestration.

DevOps Is Not About Tools

I have heard from some of our clients that are adopting DevOps. They start using tools like Jenkins or CircleCI for deployment, or implement automation for deployment using native tools like Capistrano for Rails app. However, DevOps is not automation deployment. To know the core DevOps principles, first of all, you will have to understand the actual benefits of DevOps adoption.

Let me explain the adoption of DevOps through a real-life scenario.

You may also enjoy: DevOps: Tools vs. Mindset

Case Study: Need to Automate Deployment With Docker orchestration for POS Application.

One of our teams is working on a product for the past three years. Even to this day, the development is ongoing and daily, the team is performing 3 to 4 deployments a day and sometimes hot fixes are also there. 

Let’s assume we implemented DevOps in this project we started designing Docke images and implemented orchestration with Kubernetes, and integrate CI/CD using CircleCI.    
Before:

• Deployment done using Capistrano is pretty easy

• Developer-friendly environment in which checking logs and debugging is the same as the developer’s local machine

• Focus on product development no Ops knowledge required

After 4 weeks:

• Deployment time has slightly decreased

• Better performance

• Facing issue with debugging Docker

• The Dev team is struggling with logs and hot fixes

• Deployment Permission is needed, a dependency is created

• Maintenance cost is increased

• To resolve the issue to upgrade with third-party tools, knowledge of Docker is required

Here I would like to clarify that I am not saying implementing DevOps is not a good thing, but if you are planning to implement DevOps by just reading something on the web and implementing tools, then I would not recommend opting DevOps.

How is it possible to implement DevOps tools in production by just reading documents and watching tutorial videos? It will be a struggle, and it would ultimately result in lower productivity instead of higher productivity.

Where DevOps Implementation Falls Short

Knowledge and Readiness

DevOps is quite demanding as it helps to eliminate the manual work, and it helps to speed up the testing and deployment operations. So knowledge and readiness play a crucial role; otherwise, there will be a lot of struggle and it will result in lower productivity instead of higher productivity.

Focus on Product Development

Another scenario is when the enterprise wants the team to focus on product development. The team is following Agile methodology, so they are deploying the code in the production every other week. In large-scale organizations, it is perfectly fine to work on developing a new product without worrying about other operations. But the SMEs don’t have so many resources so frequent releases of the application don't allow them to focus on DevOps.

Make sure that you are planning to implement DevOps understanding its core principles. DevOps has helped to save a good amount of time and effort through the automation of infrastructure configuration, so think how many hours could be saved automating DevOps.

Further Reading

Common DevOps Fails