Misconception(s) of DevOps and how to overcome them — Shaik Wahab
Introduction:
Having a misconception or two about a concept that is relatively new is very common. There are some misconceptions about DevOps in the market. Which prevents an organization from adopting it or growing the existing DevOps practice. In this blog, I’ve tried to list some of these misconceptions and their explanations
I’ve been working in software dev elopment for 12 years. So I have had plenty of experience with different types of projects. I have also started to work in DevOps (incidentally) over the last few years. And this has had me thinking about just why there is a backlash against the term “DevOps”. And because of this I wanted to put my thoughts on paper.
For those that don’t know. DevOps is actually an architectural view of how a business can improve its agility by adopting best-of-breed tool sets and improving processes for continuous delivery.
Misconception №1: DevOps is a job title
This may be the biggest misconception out there. DevOps is not a job title. It’s not even an acronym. It’s more of a movement. A revolution even. But definitely not a job title.
There is a lot of confusion in the marketplace about what DevOps actually is. The good news is that it has been coined, defined, and so on. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of people who are thinking they need to hire a DevOps engineer. When they really need to hire someone with different skill sets and backgrounds.
Again, DevOps is not a job title. It’s a way for software developers (Dev) to work more closely with system administrators/operators (Ops).
In theory, this collaboration allows for increased efficiency. For instance, if the developers and operators can work together and anticipate each other’s needs. They could create something like automatic provisioning for physical servers or virtual machines (VMs). This means certain applications would start up when needed and stop when no longer needed. The benefits here are obvious — reduced power consumption and faster application startup times.
Misconception №2: DevOps is just about automation
A lot of people (including a lot of CIOs) think that. DevOps is about tools and processes related to automating the deployment and operations of applications in production. This is only half true.
Tools like Puppet, Chef or Ansible can be useful for certain tasks, but DevOps is not just about tools — it’s about culture. The goal of DevOps is to improve collaboration between development and operations teams. By implementing new processes and tooling around continuous integration and continuous delivery.
DevOps is not a silver bullet that will solve all your problems, nor automatically make you money. DevOps has its own set of problems and assumptions. So you have to know what they are before you can start trying to fix them.
For example, DevOps is not just about automation. In fact, automation is the least important part of DevOps! Automation allows you to scale your operations reliably and predictably. It enables reliable deployments, better monitoring, and simpler/better testing — but it’s not the end goal!
I have seen this behavior many times at conferences and meetings. Where people talk about adopting DevOps without understanding what it means or why they should adopt it. They typically are focused on the tools they can use. Rather than the culture they need to adopt first if they want to succeed with DevOps. This is wrong and dangerous. Because they end up spinning their wheels trying to make tools fit into an organization that doesn’t understand or embrace DevOps as whole.
Misconception №3: DevOps means we can take it easy
I have been lucky to be part of the agile software development community for a long time. There is one thing I have observed over the years that has become very clear to me.
This isn’t a groundbreaking observation. But it is something I see people pretending to know, or not care about all the time. That’s something that needs to change.
Everything we do in our personal and professional lives can be a learning opportunity. Our jobs are no different.
If you want to improve your job performance as well as your career. You need to keep learning about your industry and what others are doing in it. You may not agree with everything you read or hear. But if you don’t develop a critical eye you will never grow.
I have also seen many people believe that DevOps is just “agile lite.” It certainly shares some techniques with agile software development methodologies, but the two are not synonymous. The two may even work well together, but DevOps should be used with other processes and methodologies as well.
For example, I recently worked with an organization that had never done agile development before. They were reluctant to try out any agile practices because they did not want to mess up their existing waterfall processes and then have to go back and fix them. As we worked through some of these issues with them, they began to see how agile could really help them when paired with the right tools and approach.
Misconception №4: You can deploy at any frequency in DevOps
Another misconception is that if you follow the principles of DevOps, you can deploy at any frequency you want.
There are certainly benefits to deploying more frequently, but there are also drawbacks, especially if your application isn’t designed to support frequent deployments.
One of the common reasons why organizations don’t deploy changes more frequently is. Because they have a hard time identifying the right folks who should be involved in making those deployments happen.
Conclusion:
There are many misconceptions about DevOps. If DevOps is to succeed, these misconceptions need to be addressed head on, or else they will continue to linger.
Implement a best practice, such as using automated testing for your development cycle, and you’ll find that many of the obstacles you might encounter are simply a matter of communication issues between your team members. DevOps doesn’t have to be complex.
To sum up, properly communicating with your DevOps team means making a conscious effort to understand not just the lingo, but also their reasoning for getting things done a certain way. This is vital, because in many organizations DevOps and operations roles are highly specialized.
If you don’t know what they’re talking about, they can’t tell you what they mean. This will result in miscommunication, which could result in missed deadlines, failed development cycles and more. To avoid this scenario it’s best to do your homework and understand DevOps so you can communicate effectively with your team and contribute to projects during their crucial time frames.
Originally published at https://shaikwahab.com on December 30, 2021.
