With its roots in the Agile development methodology, DevOps is a set of practices that eliminates traditional barriers between software development (Dev) and IT (Ops). The result is faster deployment, shorter deployment cycles, and higher change success rates. An excellent encapsulation of the DevOps methodology is found in the Six Principles of DevOps developed by the DevOps Agile Skills Association (DASA). Dedicated to building a culture of collaboration between historically separated teams, Velocity Knowledge proudly offers DASA-certified DevOps Foundation and Practitioner training courses.
DASA's Six Principles of DevOps
- Customer-centric action
As the gap between customers and developers rapidly shrinks in the digital age, a customer-centric approach is now essential. Rather than the status quo of customer satisfaction, the forward-thinking company strives for customer delight. In order to accomplish such a feat, DevOps teams strive to shorten customer-feedback loops. With their customers now at the table, DevOps teams make quick, adaptive, customer-driven improvements. The process begins with a minimal viable product that evolves rapidly and incrementally, rather than an overbuilt initial product that evolves slowly at long intervals.
- Goal-oriented, product-focused creation process
Traditionally, development teams followed process-oriented, waterfall, functional approaches to developing products. Turning this tradition on its head, DevOps teams are goal-oriented, always keeping the shared, final product in mind. At its core, this is an engineering mindset that marks the modern, product-focused company.
- End-to-end responsibility
Rather than simply handing their code over to operations/IT for deployment and maintenance, DevOps teams adopt full end-to-end responsibility and accountability for the products they develop. End-to-end responsibility is the hallmark of vertical, product-focused teams that stay with their products through the entire product cycle.
- Independent, cross-functional teams
DevOps teams reject the traditional assumption that each team member should keep to a narrow, myopic focus reflecting a narrow skill set. Rather, DevOps teams encourage each team member to focus on the bigger picture (the product) as they engage a broad skill set that covers every aspect of the product cycle: requirements analysis, coding, QA testing, deployment and performance support.
- Continuous adaptation and improvement
This is the principle most commonly associated with the Agile development methodology that underlies the DevOps approach. Under the mandate for continuous adaptation and improvement, DevOps teams deem it critical to respond to, and capitalize on, an ever-changing environment. Whether they are responding to new legislation, new tools or new customer needs, DevOps teams turn external changes into opportunities as they experiment with new solutions to reduce waste, lower costs and increase deployment cycle frequencies.
- Automation
Developers are always looking for new ways to automate tedious, tiresome aspects of their development workflow. However, in a DevOps environment, the drive to automate applies not only to the development workflow, but to IT infrastructure. By making full use of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud platforms, DevOps teams learn to treat infrastructure as code, and automate accordingly.
Certified DevOps Training Courses
DevOps Fundamentals
The 3-day course (DASA DevOps Fundamentals) focuses on understanding core Agile DevOps competencies and concepts. To help developers grow more comfortable with the DevOps methodology, trainers will immerse them in DevOps culture through real-world case studies, while training them in DevOps automation tools.
DevOps Practitioner
The 2-day course (DASA DevOps Practitioner) builds on the DevOps fundamentals course and turns the focus from understanding DevOps principles to applying them within an organization. Developers will quickly learn how to explain the DevOps methodology to others; how to motivate their teams to adopt it; how to recognize challenges to DevOps adoption; and how to exhibit leadership in making the transition.
The Digital Age Calls for DevOps
DevOps is a set of practices that eliminates artificial barriers between traditionally separated dev and IT teams. Faster deployment, shorter deployment cycles, and higher change success rates are an inevitable, natural outcome of adopting a DevOps methodology. DASA's Six Principles of DevOps, as outlined above, serve as an excellent introduction. First, DevOps is customer-centric, striving for shorter customer-feedback loops that drive quick, adaptive improvements. Second, DevOps is end-product oriented, encouraging a product mindset, rather than a functional mindset, that always keeps the greater goal in mind. Third, DevOps fosters end-to-end responsibility and accountability that translates to vertical, product-based teams that stay with the product throughout the entire product cycle. Fourth, DevOps calls for independent, cross-functional teams whose members develop a broad skill set covering every aspect of the product. Fifth, DevOps strives for continuous adaptation and improvement as new legislation, tools and customer needs drive bold experimentation. Sixth, DevOps calls for automating not only development tasks, but IT infrastructure that fully leverage IaaS cloud platforms.
In order to help teams capitalize on the DevOps methodology, Velocity Knowledge offers DASA-certified DevOps Foundation and Practitioner training courses that run the entire spectrum from understanding DevOps to applying it at every opportunity. Schedule a free training and development consultation now!
