Agile development has become the norm for software development for a few years back. Most companies have imbraided the new, speedier way of working that Agile provides; however, it has not all been sunshine and roses. The increased speed in software development, processes, and managing projects came with some bottlenecks.

The newfound speed meant that projects could deploy faster, but the infrastructure and operations to do so was not there. Even if developers could write software more swiftly, it still took time to get it approved, tested, and released with the same efficiency as writing the actual code.

Getting more complex systems, such as micro-service architected applications, tested and deployed regularly, also turned out to be quite tricky. Just handling multiple agile projects at the same could be an issue as handling a vast amount of project deployments could be a very tedious task.

As with the manufacturing of physical entities, automating, standardizing, and collaborating was found to be a very effective way to solve this problem. Just as Henry Ford started mass producing cars by the concept of a standardized, highly efficient assembly line, so too could software delivery be made into a streamlined pipeline for effective testing and deployment of software applications.

DevOps was grown out of a clear need to make software delivery more effortless. Automating the mundane, tedious, and critical parts of software delivery, lets developers, managers, and executives all focus on the most important part. Building a product with great value for their customers.

For Visma, we created creating a testing pipeline for their newly developed micro-service applications. This pipeline could automatically deploy complex testing environments and run automated tests. For the City of Helsinki, we created a workflow that helps out in all parts of the delivery cycle, from testing, to staging to production. Full automated development, deployment, and monitoring pipeline.

Software tools and practices are not everything, however. It takes more than just CI/CD pipelines, cool dashboards, and fancy tools to reach the true potential of DevOps. Companies that get out the most of DevOps practices are the once that embrace it throughout their company. The ones that seek to be radically open-minded create a self-service driven approach to things and collaborate over department walls. Only by truly working together can a company reach its true potential.

For organizations to create a smarter and more sustainable workflow, they are must improve their ways of working; to become more consistent, structured, and, therefore, professional in everything that it is doing. DevOps practices help in every step of the way, from automating the mundane to stripping down company silos.

Research has shown that DevOps not only increase the efficiency of software development powerhouses, but every business with any software development showed a definite increase in productivity when implementing DevOps practices. Some companies might believe that they are too unique or too complex for DevOps practices and that it could never work. This has also shown to be incorrect as companies such as banks, insurance companies and shipyards are already embracing DevOps.

When starting, however, the most common concern that over a third of all companies face is selecting the right tools to use. Organizing workshops and cooperating with service providers might be a good idea to get you started most efficiently.

So, embrace the change and push your business towards DevOps and digital sustainability. It’s worth it.