DevOps is the buzzword that is used everywhere these days. The term was first used back in 2008 in Agile Toronto conference by Andrew Shafer and Patrick Debois. The popularity of the term DevOps grew massively in 2016-17.
Businesses of all types and sizes are shifting towards DevOps and its adoption is growing rapidly. As much as 67% of SMEs and 47% of enterprises have adopted it already.
So what is this DevOps anyway and how it can be of any help for your business.
Let’s see why DevOps is the key to your business growth and success.
What is DevOps?
It is defined as the practice of operations and development engineers participating together in the entire service lifecycle starting from designing to production and beyond.
Generally, it is a set of best practices that automates all the processes between software development and IT team so as to release quality apps and software faster than ever. Though there are other app development techniques and tools that let you create apps quickly such as Mean Stack, nothing beats DevOps because it takes a holistic approach and connects your entire organization.
There are some 4 million apps available in the app stores and an Android app loses 77% of its daily active users in the first three days after the launch. This means there is zero error margin for app developers.
To close the gap between software development and IT team, businesses are shifting towards DevOps as a way to develop quality apps quickly.
Why DevOps is the key to your business growth
There are several reasons as to why DevOps promotes business growth and the fact of the matter is: It works. These four Fortune 500 companies are already killing it with DevOps.
Here are a few ways DevOps can help your business grow and move in the right direction in no time.
1. Stay ahead of your competitors
According to State of DevOps Report 2017, organizations that utilize DevOps principles have 46x more frequent software deployments than their competitors.
Think of DevOps as a competitive edge.
As soon as you switch to DevOps successfully, you get a competitive advantage. You’d be in a position where you can address software issues quickly and efficiently before your competitors can even think of reacting.
For instance, any organization can use artificial intelligence in software engineering but DevOps organizations will be at the forefront due to their ability to minimize delays in software creation since both development and IT teams are part of the software development process.
2. Customer needs
Customer demands and needs change quickly. They want new updates and features fast. You have to keep your app updated so as to meet customer needs and expectations. This is where DevOps help you a lot.
It enables you to quickly roll out new updates based on what customers need and what’s working.
This makes your customers happy and they continue to use your app – your business grows.
3. Better user experience
DevOps is focused on customer experience. It puts user experience at the forefront.
Your development team is more concerned on optimizing your app’s user experience instead of doing what stakeholders are interested in.
This is one of the greatest achievements of DevOps and one reason why DevOps calls for a complete change in organization culture.
The whole idea is to create apps that your users will love interacting with. This increases revenue, customer lifetime value, and improves business stability.
4. Employee efficiency and engagement
Your internal customers are as important as external customers. DevOps improves your internal customers’ efficiency and engagement. The two departments cannot perform in isolation in a DevOps organization, developers and operations must collaborate and work together as a team. Their focus is project, not the team.
This improves efficiency and makes your employees engaged. They have to give their 100% to every project because this is what it is all about.
Statistics show that employees in high-performing DevOps organizations are 2.2x more likely to recommend their organization to a friend because they’re highly engaged.
5. Better communication and collaboration
The communication gap between your developer and IT department cease to exist because they have to work together. Your development team won’t have to wait for weeks to get an update from operations team rather they get feedback in real-time.
This improves cross-department communication and collaboration throughout your organization – which is a healthy sign for any business.
Final thoughts
DevOps is the only way to move forward in today’s tech-powered era. No matter what industry you’re in, you cannot survive without development and operations teams. If you have to do it, do it in a way that your business can drive maximum benefit from it.
So what’s stopping you from adopting DevOps?
Jump right in