Why your business success is in the hands of development and operations

One of the biggest headaches of any IT leader today is managing cross-functional teams to develop and deploy software in good time. Not only does their work have to be continuously operational to stay productive, it needs to save the business money, time and all while fixing a never-ending cycle of bugs.

This is why that without a robust DevOps process in place, which is to the benefit of the entire organization, IT management leaders often feel like they are chasing the impossible. 

What is DevOps?

DevOps (development and operations) practices help you plan how both teams can work cohesively to deliver your company’s products and services, meet customer needs, and stay ahead of your competitors. In short, it is a set of tools that enables safer, faster handling of any IT software delivery. 

Yet, according to Gartner, 75 percent of DevOps initiatives have not been able to meet expectations by the beginning of this year due to inefficient collaboration, lack of buy-in from employees, trying to do too much quickly, and unrealistic expectations. So, why is it still a process which puts businesses into a flurry of uncertainty when they cannot do with it? To answer that, we must look at the resounding benefits DevOps brings:

Improving the security of your software

Your IT security team is involved in the software development cycle from the start rather than at the deployment stage. They are there from the beginning where the foundation of your product development and its security should be a collaborative process. DevOps makes this possible so that outdated security practices do not have to be integrated into the infrastructure independently, cutting out lengthy back, and forth communications and glitches interfering with the peaks of customer demand. In other words, it is the go-between to improve collaboration efficiency throughout the business.   

A subset of DevOps is DevSecOps which will combine development, security, and operations across your products and services, will improve your capabilities for delivering quality and meeting client expectations. Building your security through a seamless system in which bugs and other issues can be addressed almost unnoticed to the untrained eye makes sense. Therefore, managers should first identify these roadblocks and address them before applying DevOps practices in their organizations.    

Addressing the bugs

Because detecting and addressing the bugs are the priority of any IT department, disruptions need to be handled quickly and efficiently. This can only be done through immediate action where all departments involved can act fast. Yet the beauty of this is that the process can be continuous rather than reactive and thus improve the quality of your software when deploying new features allowing you to make changes rapidly.

Without a system in place that enables the smooth path of communication between workforces, productivity is slowed to an uncomfortable halt which leads to an often-damaging customer experience. 

Improving the customer satisfaction ratings

A significant benefit of adopting DevOps practices is that it lowers the failure rates of new features while improving recovery time. The continuous deployment, testing, and feedback loop ensures faster service delivery and happier customers. The development team can focus on creating superior products by automating the software pipeline while the operations team can improve business delivery.

Faster delivery of your products and services should not be a pipe dream only fit for those who understand DevOps and are willing to do the homework for successful implementation. Businesses should feel confident in grasping the nettle if they want to stay ahead of the field and embrace the cloud with all its complexity.

So, if increasing your customer satisfaction and positively impacting your bottom line is on your business priority list, then implementing a DevOps process that works can not only save the IT headache but brighten your business horizons in the process.

Photo Credit: anathomy/Shutterstock

Alex Lane is Head of Sales and Marketing at cloud hosting and managed IT service specialists zsah.