By applying the principles and practices of DevOps, IT development and production teams can align their objectives and accelerate processes. Axians is helping companies to move in this direction.
Here’s a figure to give an idea of the benefit of helping IT teams work better together: 40% of software rollouts end up having to be reworked because they do not meet users’ needs. Besides the inconvenience caused to the teams, these failures impact on the company’s bottom line. According to Microsoft, the average cost of downtime for a customer-facing application is close to $100,000 an hour.
Typically, when a new rollout fails to work perfectly, developers tend to blame operational staff, and vice versa. The antagonism between developers and operational staff stems from their different priorities.
The main objective for a frontline team responsible for operations is to guarantee system stability. For them, quality is paramount, taking priority over time and cost. Conversely, the development team’s main objective is to implement the required changes as economically and quickly as possible.
To minimise this historical antagonism, a set of practices was developed, known as DevOps, with the aim of aligning the functions of the software development (Dev) and operations (Ops) teams. Axians, the VINCI Energies ICT brand, helps businesses to adopt DevOps practices, as Ricardo Carvalho, Innovation Project Manager explains, “To align the objectives of teams that will be working closely together”.
Support. Deploy. Administer.
The benefits of DevOps go beyond making teams work together and automating the environment and servers. Acting on communication and feedback, adds Ricardo Carvalho, “DevOps makes it possible to deploy software faster, then to administer them with an understanding of their performance and added value, so as to be in a position to suggest improvements for the next development cycle”.
“In an ideal DevOps world, development and operational professionals will form a single group”
To integrate these advances, the business must adopt new cultural norms and structures that allow it to reach common objectives throughout the entire digital process, along with tool chains allowing teams to work together in real time with a minimum of transferring between tools.
Operating in agile mode
To implement these practices, Axians offers a range of services, including consulting, training and engineering. Its experts can also assist businesses on site as needed, to install the new tools and train their teams in a shared agile methodology.
“In an ideal DevOps world”, says Ricardo Carvalho, “development and operational people work together in a single cross-functional team with expertise in design, development, product management, quality control, infrastructures, and security. This team follows a agile project management method, working iteratively and using short development cycles. This allow teams to be more efficient and adaptive”.
Lastly, as the expert reminds us, every implementation is unique. Ultimately, says Ricardo Carvalho, “Businesses that adopt DevOps bring their products to market more quickly”.
17/12/2020
