DEVOPS 5 IDEALS
Efficient and seamless software releases are major goals for any enterprise using Salesforce release management, data back-up and recovery, and security solutions. Achieving these objectives generally requires an organization to adopt specific best practices. With 2020 as the new decade of digital transformation, DevOps is paving the way for successful enterprise Salesforce operations. This methodology offers five ideal principles that can help organizations optimize their software application releases, while also ensuring the highest levels of quality and security. The First Principle: Agile Software Development At the crux of the DevOps methodology is agile software development. This approach bills itself as a set of divergent methodologies with the core idea of leveraging regular ‘sprints’ of software development. The goal is to focus on swiftness and reliability across the entire software development life cycle (SDLC). This includes coding, testing and deployment. Rather than relying on traditional Waterfall methodologies, organizations should funnel in whatever resources they have at hand to quickly yet precisely complete the development of software. Small development teams, often called ‘squads’ should leverage a series of quick, iterative sprints to yield the best return-on-investment in software development. The Second Principle: Automation In addition to swift software development, automation is central to the DevOps principle. Automation is a keystone to successful software releases in 2020 — it is the idea that any and all manual processes are to be replaced with tools and automated scripts. These automated solutions can extend into any facet of the software development life cycle. Organizations should leverage automated tools and processes, such as Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, deployment automation solutions, Quality Assurance (QA) and more. Automation allows organizations to spend less time on mundane processes and instead shift their focus to more high-value tasks, such as troubleshooting and innovation. The Third Principle: Continuous Improvement Rather than stagnate with traditional release cycles, DevOps encourages a state of constant improvement and evolution. This means striving for higher productivity in every step of the SDLC, from coding to deployment. Organizations should begin with identifying the most integral points of improvement in the SDLC, such as the testing phase. From there, they should leverage a series of methodologies to shorten the length of the SDLC. Some popular approaches used include lean testing, which speeds up the return-on-investment for SDLC; Agile-driven testing, which focuses more on rapid SDLCs; and, notably, DevOps testing, which pays substantial attention to quality assurance and security. The Fourth Principle: Collaboration No software development process is infallible; instead, organizations should continually refine and optimize existing processes. This is where collaboration comes in. Organizations should strive to cultivate a collaborative, open-minded environment. This culture of cooperation should span the entirety of the SDLC, with participants from every stage of the SDLC — developers, testers, security experts, system administrators, and more — working in unison. When everyone is open to each other’s ideas and solutions, this gives organizations the best chance to truly optimize their software releases and make lasting change. The Fifth Principle: Metrics and Measurement Finally, DevOps recommends leveraging measurable metrics and data to measure performance across the SDLC. This not only helps ensure that organizations are continually improving the overall release process but helps to promote collaborative efforts. By providing relevant metrics to all participants in the SDLC process, employees are incentivized to work together toward the same end goal — optimizing the software development life cycle. The Benefits of DevOps When followed properly, organizations leveraging DevOps can experience huge improvements to their software releases, including shortened develop and deployment times, improved collaboration, and increased release success rate. Furthermore, by focusing on proactive measures — such as automation and security — rather than reactive measures — such as fire-fighting bugs or faulty code — organizations can drastically reduce the amount of troubleshooting required. Not every organization is well-equipped to take on DevOps right away, but implementing its five principles can go a long way to streamlining fantastic, reliable software application releases. For software provider focused on Salesforce release management, data backup and recovery, and Salesforce security solutions, effective DevOps governance is essential. To meet the enterprise uses’ demand for software agility and reliability, organizations should invest in a comprehensive suite of DevOps solutions.
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