The Pros and Cons of DevOps at Answer

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a combination of practices, tools, and a philosophical framework for automating and integrating software development and IT teams. Team empowerment, cross-team communication and collaboration, and technology automation are all highlighted.

DevOps resembles almost a mindset, but it also has the connotation of a buzzword that takes on various interpretations. For Answer, “DevOps is about making other people's lives easier - removing opportunities for things to go wrong and automating manual repetitive tasks; essentially, preventing human error wherever possible.” Says Lead Developer, Kris Bloe.

According to Software Development, DevOps is a concept that combines the words development and operations to describe the practice of combining both disciplines into a single, continuous process.

​Why DevOps?

Atlassian's 2020 DevOps Trends survey showed that DevOps had a positive influence on 99% of respondents. Faster and easier releases, increased team productivity, increased security, higher quality products, and happier teams and customers.

How is it used at Answer?

It is considered almost a practice at Answer - “We take a look at how people do things, how people get things done, and where efficiencies can be gained through the use of things like automation.” Kris stated.

Is it a right choice for Answer?

“Yes, but it’s challenging because it is something that is difficult to teach”, says Kris “Trying to change behaviour and ways in which people operate is not easy because everyone has idiosyncrasies, which by them self is fine, but when you get a group of individuals to work collaboratively, those nuances can cause issues. Involving DevOps practices can aid their mitigation.”

What are some of the red flags of DevOps?

One potential negative of this mindset is that it's slower because setting up processes takes time. As long as you can run without process and red tape, arguably, the more you can do initially, but in the long run, it's not beneficial.

DevOps people also have to decide what rules others need to follow, which isn't as easy as it seems.

Answer and the future of DevOps

"As Answer grows, we’re building up company-wide standards that remain consistent across projects, so, if a client needs a particular product or setup, we have something ‘ready to go’. This not only saves time, but also benefits from a sales perspective; we can explain to potential clients what we’d do, and have a reference point of an existing project with the same configuration to give as an example.” Kris suggested that implementing a long-term DevOps strategy would be a progressive step for Answer.