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The Top Mistakes to Avoid for Achieving DevOps Success

devops mistakes

devops mistakes

Everyone in the IT space knows about DevOps at this point. Practitioners love talking about it and how it could improve your IT environment, but making it a reality proves difficult. It offers such a dramatic change from traditional application development, and the positive results make it more enticing. Interested companies end up diving in without the right approach.

Earlier this year, a study from Embotics and Ponemon Institute surveyed over 600 IT leaders to learn their take on DevOps. Unsurprisingly, 74% of respondents recognized the importance of DevOps, but over 50% of respondents felt they didn’t have the capabilities to make it happen. This disparity emphasizes the distance between wanting and doing. At least these leaders were self-aware enough to leave DevOps on the backburner. This isn’t always the case though, many organizations follow steps without the right approach. We’ve compiled a list of DevOps mistakes to avoid during implementation.

Doing it on your own

DevOps implementation introduces a variety of challenges such as culture shift, new workload environments, increasing speed, and more. A successful DevOps culture requires a lot of expertise, something most enterprises don’t have internally. Unless you plan to hire a DevOps engineer to bridge the gap, the best way to maximize your effort comes from a managed service provider.

Many managed service providers specialize in cultural transformations for DevOps. They help enterprises set up automation tools and even train employees. Furthermore, if needed, MSPs help with ongoing cloud maintenance. For example, they assist with workloads, infrastructure, security, and even provide 24/7 support. Thus, making the move to DevOps with an MSP eliminates a lot of the stress of an internal transformation.

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Unreasonable goals

The reputation of DevOps today precedes itself  People hear about large successful companies utilizing the practice and want to replicate their success. Teams often try every tool or fad, following the likes of Netflix. For example, continuous deployment provides the most value after finding the behavioral patterns of your user base. Implementing this tool early often leads to unexpected negative outcomes.

Enterprises need patience in implementing DevOps. Its appeal revolves around increased speed, but this can’t be the only goal. Make sure your team understands the importance of speed-related changes. For example, automation significantly helps for DevOps, but your team must be ready for it. Implementation requires a balance between collaboration with increased speed. So, again, patience needs to be maintained.

Relying on one component

Everyone wants to find a tool that makes their lives easier, and DevOps doesn’t have a shortage of relevant solutions. For example, containers, network monitoring, BUDR, etc. all have their place in DevOps. These solutions come together to create a powerful environment for IT teams. Solutions only provide the groundwork, though. Nurturing collaboration while learning new tools will make your DevOps transformation far easier. Each component to DevOps culture has equal importance. DevOps combines culture, process, and tools. Since each part is integral, relying too much on one component inhibits success.

Ignoring security

DevOps brings development and operations together, but security becomes rejected child in the IT world. Security only makes IT run smoother and shifting left elevates collaboration. Developers should have a deeper understanding of security. Moving security left on the development pipeline is the first step.

Understanding the specifics of what your colleagues are looking for makes the entire software release process easier. DevOps is about trust and cooperation, training can further bring teams together. Having knowledge about what security teams will be looking for makes the entire process easier for everyone. Developers will recognize flaws as they’re working, thus creating better code.

Sometimes, security teams are coming in after the code is live and things are already out of control. Finding problems late in the development cycle, or even after the release, will create an unsafe cloud environment. Recent hacks have been caused by unsafe DevOps practice. Releasing innovative products means little if your code isn’t safe. Shifting security left isn’t optional anymore, it’s a necessity.

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