Across nearly all industries, organizations are adopting DevOps frameworks. DevOps works to combine Development and Operations teams to develop code faster, more effective, and with fewer bugs. And, while the coding part of DevOps requires many tools, it also involves a culture shift. It requires many team members to communicate effectively and share accountability while working on different parts of the project. When DevOps is rolled out as a framework and a culture, organizations see faster development cycles, fewer product errors and increased employee loyalty.
Yet, DevOp cultural traits like independence, goal-sharing, and accountability are valuable in other aspects of the business. In fact, several software startups are leveraging the best of DevOps culture to inspire great productivity out of all team members.
DevOps Origins
DevOps culture signifies the cohesion of the Development and Operations of the company. Before the conception of DevOps, after the software was developed, it was transferred to the operations teams who had no hand in the developmental phase. Naturally, this causes a downtime that would result in a very time-insensitive learning process. Such long delays can be deadly for startups where they have to impress and grow their clientele with timely releases. By combining Development and Operations, the time duration that would normally take to get a software launch-ready is reduced drastically.
Several of DevOps characteristics can be used in a software startup to increase overall efficiency and create a better end product. Common goals will help members understand their impact, while close interdisciplinary teams create team players who are committed to a lifetime of learning new skills. Here
A Culture of Shared Goals
Similarly, to how DevOps aligns two teams with singular goals, this mindset can be brought to other teams. By setting unified goals across multiple teams, it encourages team members to work as a cohesive unit, and effectively communicate the milestones. Every member of the hybrid team understands how they contribute to the success of a project and they can clearly see how their work impacts the work of their peers. For example, if the marketing team and development team are working to a new release together, marketing can work to put press placements and email existing customers at the same time the new product is released. If devs know that a delay will hold up key press, they will be more open to ensuring the work is completed by the key dates.
Fostering Team Players
DevOps requires collaboration and trust between different team leaders from the development and operations teams. Leaders need to agree on when to invest in new technology, and when to outsource. They must have a shared vision and create a unified roadmap for all other team members to follow. This collaboration requires each team lead to take on responsibilities outside of his or her own domain and be a student of other disciplines. For example, the Operations lead should understand that even after a deploy, artifact archiving and local workstation management need to take some time before hopping into the next project. While these activities are often outside of an operations lead role, by understanding the bigger picture, he or she will be able to provide better timelines and better drive the business forward.
Develop Agile, Skilled Employees
By combining the Development team and the Operations team, you can effectively build a continuous feedback loop in your startup for employees. DevOps allows workers across development and operations to try different skill sets as they work toward unified goals. It can be a great opportunity for non-technical resources to grow an understanding of the dev work, and for the development team to take time to think about overall company goals or operations. Managers should encourage and empower team members to learn from different teams and develop skills that will help them think critically about their work.
Additionally, DevOps teams must strive to continually improve. Measuring key performance indicators across teams like future lead time, mean time to recovery, and successful build percentage, can help employees understand how they are performing and where they need to grow.
Developed Shared Learnings
By working towards the same goals with the same KPIs, teams will be incentivized to help each other and share learnings across teams. This will increase the trust among team members and foster more collaboration and open communication. DevOps tools like JFrog and Helm Repository help teams collaborate security and efficiently through a single URL rather than having disparate tools and locations for code.
Another advantage of working together with the Operations team is that the Developers will be able to get feedback on factors like server stability, test prerequisites, and consumer likes and have shared learnings. By working together on projects, team members will have a similar understanding of customer pain points and overall product priorities.
DevOp Practices Lead to Higher Quality End Products
With the implementation of DevOps as a culture, teams work in collaboration with shared vision, milestones and objectives. This ensures team members can work on various tasks, while still contributing to the overall goal. It creates a team that has shared skills and learnings and is able to work faster and more effectively.
As a startup, software development is solely a team effort. Today, even software giants are adopting the DevOps culture to maintain peak efficiency. So for startups, it is imperative to adopt this work culture as quickly as possible so that no revamps are necessary for the future. Click here to read more on DevOps as a service solutions tailored for startups.
