Why Now Is the Time to Put Your DevOps Implementation Plan in Action

Businesses across the globe have seen dramatic disruptions in recent months. From impacted supply chain operations to the increased reliance on cloud and other technologies to support a remote workforce, the current public health pandemic is shaking up business processes with nearly zero exceptions. 

In this time of crisis, it can be difficult to even think about the possibility of embarking on a new implementation. This is particularly true when it comes to strategies that involve the creation of apps and platforms that organizations and customers desperately need. In the current age of social distancing, consumers and remote workers alike are clamoring for cloud-based, accessible apps, and DevOps is the solution to delivering these quickly and efficiently. 

In fact, many enterprise DevOps teams are increasing their focus on certain critical KPIs in connection with their application development. According to IDC, 40% of DevOps teams plan to place a higher consideration around cost and revenue in order to support the application performance and overall impact to the business’s operations. 

With so many impactful changes taking place in your organization due to the public health pandemic, now is actually the perfect time to put a DevOps implementation plan in action. 

But won’t this create more disruption? 

Anytime an organization launches a new implementation plan or works to adopt a strategy like DevOps, there will, of course, be impacts to normal business processes. Due to COVID-19, companies in every market across the globe are feeling the strain, and many are turning to employee- and customer-facing applications to help keep operations on track and support newly remote work activities. 

However, there are a few critical advantages to deploying a DevOps implementation plan in this type of volatile and uncertain landscape: 

• Prepare for future disruptions or downturn: The current public health pandemic has highlighted certain areas of weakness within businesses, and now is the time to shore up these gaps. Putting a DevOps implementation plan to work now will help your team be better prepared for any times of crises that may emerge in the future.

• Your team may have more time: Despite the disruptions to regular processes and the shift to remote working styles, many organizations are experiencing a downturn in normal business demands. This can provide more time for your internal IT and development teams to work on a new strategy like DevOps. 

• Streamline your current software development process: The DevOps model provides benefits in and of itself, especially when it comes to continuous testing, quality assurance and software delivery. Compared to traditional waterfall approaches, DevOps helps support quality assurance earlier in the development cycle, helping avoid costly errors or other software delivery issues. Even a small software bug can cost 100 times the expense to fix when discovered later in the development process. And, if such a bug makes it to production, a single hour of customer-facing app downtime can cost a business upwards of $100,000.  

• Demand is up for DevOps: Thanks to benefits like cost reduction and continuous testing for heightened quality assurance, demand is up for software development using the DevOps model. This strategy also provides more opportunities for software owners to communicate and collaborate with DevOps engineers, helping to ensure that the resulting app matches users’ and owners’ requirements and preferences. Considering roughly 40% of implementations are reworked due to missing the mark, this closer collaboration is a considerable advantage. 

DevOps implementation roadmap 

As decision-makers work with IT admins and DevOps engineers to craft their implementation plan, there are a few key elements to incorporate, including an assessment of existing cloud infrastructure and production environment. It’s also beneficial to maintain a focus on the people and DevOps processes that make this style of development possible. 

Properly executing a DevOps implementation plan will help your development cycles become highly agile and productive, and of the highest quality possible. However, it can be most beneficial to turn to the experts for assistance in this endeavor. 

ACTS can offer the required expertise – including in key areas like continuous integration, continuous deployment, automated testing and configuration management – to support a robust implementation strategy. Connect with us to get started on a DevOps Strategic Assessment to help inform your unique DevOps implementation roadmap today.