DevOps has turned into the hottest trend in project management for managing software and technology projects. According to an IDC study, the worldwide DevOps software market is forecasted to reach $6.6 billion in 2022. (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) has become an integral part of the software development process.

DevOps, as the term implies, brings together development and operations teams throughout the project lifecycle. Additionally, it uses Agile methodologies and lean principles to execute the project lifecycle. However, to make the project successful, what is more, important is to follow the best practices for DevOps, which we will discuss in this blog.

The best practices for DevOps are not only useful to make the project successful but also a standard practice to be followed by the DevOps engineer or any developer working on the project. This is the crucial area that focuses on performing the same task more elegantly. This skill develops over time, and of course, any kind of specialization like certification is helpful in this aspect.

Let’s explore some of the best practices for DevOps projects.

Related post – What are DevOps Lifecycle phases?

10 Best practices for DevOps projects

1.   Start with small projects

If it is a new venture for DevOps, then it is always advisable to start with small. As the project team is new to explore DevOps, let them first grab how DevOps work in a real-life project. This is something that one cannot acquire 100% through bookish knowledge.

Trying DevOps with a small project is especially effective for a team that is well connected and working together for a while. This enhances the right environment for them and works as one of the best practices for DevOps project management. 

2. Let Automation takes the momentum from the beginning 

As part of the best practices for DevOps projects often relies on Automation from the very beginning. They heavily rely on CI/CD, which is the heart of the DevOps lifecycle. As you know, any agile development encounters numerous changes very frequently that needs frequent deployment and release. This is closely related to code changes. Hence, some kind of Automation is necessary to release on-time.

3. Minimum Viable Product

The concept of Minimum Viable Product is exceptionally effective in any agile project-based on lean startup and stresses the impact of learning from new product development. No matter whether your project is small or big, it works extremely helpful. For DevOps, MVP turns out critical and necessary.

On the other hand, MVP focuses on high return and lost risk projects. Also, you can measure and improve upon each iteration. As part of best practices for DevOps, if this is put into action, it creates fast, small products that can be deployed quickly and measured for feedback. Hence, a well-run DevOps environment can take full advantage of what is learned in these short cycles and do small.

4. Shift left with CI/CD

As mentioned in point 2, some Automation in coding is a part of best practices; simultaneously when teams “shift left,” it brings testing into code development processes early. As a result, instead of sending multiple changes to a separate test, various testing is performed throughout the coding process. This helps developers fix bugs or improve code quality while working on the relevant section of the codebase. The practice of CI/CD, delivery, and deployment underpins the ability to shift left. 

Shifting left in CI/CD focuses on preventing problems instead of solving them later. Using this, the teams can detect them early, even if it arises in the process. This leads to a more manageable resolution of errors. Simultaneously, this shortens up the test cycle time and preserves the quality of the code. The shift-left approach also shortens the feedback loop between developers and end-users.

5.  A solid testing strategy 

Before the code is deployed, it needs to be tested. As the best practices for DevOps, the same type of tests or similar functionalities are grouped into test cases. Developers write such test cases, and they need to provide a proper testing strategy. It is extremely important to have a clear testing strategy from the beginning to eliminate major future bugs. Once all test cases and individual test cases are passed, the only deployment is performed.

6.  Eliminate silos

Silos and DevOps do not go hand in hand. In DevOps, development and operations move horizontally, whereas silos are vertical. But how to ensure silos are not part of your DevOps project management? The critical part is to break the silos culture by breaking the silos mentality. A unified vision for the organization is necessary to ensure that all stakeholders and team members agreed upon the common goal.

7. Create collaborative and real-time project visibility with dashboard

DevOps is all about a collaboration among team members. For a successful DevOps workflow, the clients and the team members need to be in sync. This helps to maximize the integration and flow of the project. At the same time, it will help everyone involved in the project to understand where the project stands. So, every team member should have access to the project status and other indexes of progress. Different tools are used for this purpose.

This is especially applicable for large projects where a lot of things run at a time and a lot of people are involved. Clustering is a common practice here. But if there is no proper dashboard to manage this individual task, the project will jeopardize. So, it needs a birds-eye-view on the whole project to see what’s going on at each individual level and where the team is stuck. Task management software like Jira is commonly used for this purpose by the companies. In some cases, companies make their own dashboards as well.

An automated dashboard is a powerful weapon for a DevOps engineer. You will get data along with detailed reports and insights about different operations. Some of these include the number of tests, duration of each test, and success or failure rates. With such an automated dashboard, team members can review setup changes to the server and database. Automated dashboards provide a record of deployments across the system.

8. Using the right tools 

The tool is an essential criterion in any DevOps project. Because DevOps is all about collaboration, removing silos and unnecessary overheads. To execute these best practices principles choosing appropriate tools is very important. The right choice of tools for development, testing, and deployment is necessary for a successful DevOps project and also a part of the best practice of DevOps. However, every project is unique in terms of the tools they use. However, some tools are standard, like online repository tool, code editor. But depending on the unique features of the project selection of tools may vary.

9.  Reduce overhead 

One of the main reasons of using the Agile process in software development is reducing the overhead. However, Agile has some limitations in reducing overhead, and there comes the DevOps process to reduce it further. The concept and application of Automation and continuity reduce overhead to a great extent. On the other hand, reducing the overhead maximizes the collaboration and productivity in a project team.

There are many ways to reduce overhead, like cutting back on the meeting by duration and number of occurrences, eliminating status reports, etc.

10.  Getting frequent reviews 

As DevOps may undergo a frequent change in code, review after every client’s change can eliminate every little chance of misunderstanding between the development team and the client. This also creates a bond between them, which is an indication of good project health. Besides, it eliminates the chance of any misconception and irregularity, and chances of missing functionality.

Final Thought

DevOps or CI/CD best practices’ primarily automate the process of development, testing, and releasing software. As a result, you will need access to DevOps tools for simplifying Automation with better visibility. Further, the project should have a mechanism to track DevOps performance metrics throughout the software delivery lifecycle to raise alerts for quick recovery when something goes wrong in release or deployment.