Using DevOps in a Cloud Environment

DevOps and the cloud have significantly changed software development processes and how quality assurance professionals operate. While these approaches might entail a number of changes, they can also bring significant benefits for teams looking to work together more effectively and speed up time to market. The trick, then, will be learning how to leverage DevOps practices in the cloud environment to streamline processes and yield the best results.

Better Collaboration Opportunities

DevOps emphasizes the ability for all stakeholders to work seamlessly together on a project. However, if teams are geographically dispersed or are still leveraging traditional development processes, it will lessen the chances of DevOps success. In an interview with TechTarget, industry expert Jim Ensell noted that barriers between development and operations will result in inconsistent release practices, often causing deployment delays, unnecessary costs and application availability problems.

However, the cloud fixes this by providing resources that are accessible from anywhere. This means that teams can work on defect management and have clear oversight regarding what changes are being made in real time. Stakeholders will always have the most recent information on hand, mitigating potential redundancies and improving decision-making capabilities.

Scales as Needed

DevOps also entails using powerful assets like an enterprise test management solution to enable organizations to test and deploy code as often as needed. In traditional development workflows, scaling these types of resources was often a time-consuming and costly process. With the cloud, however, provisioning professionals with the assets they require has never been easier. IBM noted that development tools can be brought up quickly and scaled as needed, no matter what type of cloud environment is being leveraged.

"Leveraging such resources in a managed way can alleviate excessive costs, typically due to overprovisioning of hardware, long lead times in moving applications into production and increased risk of breached governance caused by the deployment of shadow IT," Ensell stated.

Enables Agile Development Processes

Cloud and DevOps are both products of the need for agility in the enterprise world. InfoQ contributor Jeff Sussna noted that cloud allows IT departments to focus on adding business-specific value, while DevOps ensures that continuous changes are delivered on top of a quality platform. Agile methods can often be a challenge to sustain, but with tools like the cloud DevOps, it becomes significantly more manageable.

"Agile has taught development how to move at the same speed and with the same flexibility as business; DevOps tries to teach operations to move at the same speed and with the same flexibility as development," Sussna wrote. "Success in the 21st century requires radical alignment of goals, viewpoints, language and cadence from marketing all the way through to operations."

DevOps & cloud can work together seamlessly to improve software development processes and ensure that QA teams have the tools they need to succeed. By leveraging DevOps in a cloud environment, QA and development groups can deploy faster, focus on quality and better collaborate for better app functionality.