As any successful Chief Information Officer (CIO) will tell you, IT governance requires a clear understanding of how IT creates tangible value. Efficiency and functionality are both well and good, but how do they support and improve key products and services? To put it another way, how do the metrics of IT translate into strategic gains?
As a business process, IT governance also relates to people. Investing in personnel and their skills creates business value, as does re-optimizing management structures between teams and departments. To ensure IT is generating as much value as possible, a business must make sure staff are using the right approach while also sharing skills, effort, and insight as necessary.
The DevOps methodology is an organic collection of best practices for managing development and operations pipelines. CIOs and DevOps go hand in hand, with their mutual focus on optimizing the technical and human elements of IT for the sake of business value. DevOps creates seamless integration between teams and departments while simultaneously prioritizing automation and reliability. This empowers continuous delivery within an enduring culture that is always striving for further optimization, from the start of the development process all the way past the point of deployment.
So, what are the biggest benefits of DevOps that a CIO should keep in mind?
DevOps supports ongoing business deliverables
DevOps offers an ideal solution for thriving in the digital age. It encourages a focus on continuous testing, automation, integration, and communication, as well as applying diverse insight to problems throughout IT pipelines. In other words, the methodology helps to holistically optimize the speed and reliability of essential processes.
This is ideal for CIOs who want to guarantee continuous deployment. This is often a requirement these days, with many businesses having to release code several times a week, if not daily. Those who already utilize Agile development will also find it easier to integrate the best practices of DevOps.
The time saved by DevOps can be used elsewhere, such as concept development, project planning, or coming up with ideas for further DevOps pipeline optimization. DevOps can even help upskill developers and operations specialists in IT governance, making it easier for them to offer ideas and feedback on how IT can better support high-level strategic goals.
By investing in DevOps training, CIOs can meet targets with much greater speed and reliability. This will keep not only stakeholders happy but also customers. Modern IT is becoming increasingly competitive, and CIOs must be able to place the full power of IT behind business deliverables. When it comes to reliably creating ongoing value, DevOps is an excellent choice.
Optimized collaboration
DevOps cultures generally employ a cross-functional approach to IT management. Teams are made up of ‘DevOps engineers’ with a variety of skills and backgrounds (to the extent that two DevOps engineers could have almost entirely different qualifications). This non-siloed approach ensures that ideas and insight can flow freely, making it easier to solve operational problems from a software developer’s perspective, add operational considerations to development processes, and so on.
Another element of this is transparency. DevOps teams will clearly allocate responsibilities and establish metrics for tracking performance. By creating an open and collaborative environment, DevOps engineers will also enjoy an increase in morale.
In short, investing in DevOps training can help CIOs to break down silos preventing collaboration, making environments far more efficient, supportive, and constructive as a result.
Increased accountability
DevOps is an end-to-end approach, with its overarching philosophy being applied throughout IT pipelines. As part of this, the roles and responsibilities of DevOps engineers, as well as associated executives, managers, and so on, are clearly defined. This ensures that whenever something goes wrong or specific expertise is required, other team members know exactly who to speak to.
A key element of this is tracking the right metrics. Measuring the success of DevOps requires accurate reporting in terms of frequency of deployment, frequency of downtime, application performance, mean time to detection (MTTD) and mean time to recovery (MTTR), and more. This makes it easier to not only measure performance, but also highlight flaws and areas for improvement.
Solving bugs with speed and precision
Benefiting from increased transparency, accountability, and collaboration, DevOps teams are well equipped to tackle bugs, vulnerabilities, and other issues before they have the chance to develop into more serious problems. Transparency and clear metrics help engineers highlight where vulnerabilities first occurred, accountability clarifies who is best suited to solving the problem, and collaboration ensures that the process of fixing the issue doesn’t get bogged down.
A number of additional DevOps tools and practices support this. For example, many DevOps teams utilize ‘microservice architectures’, which allow engineers to track, comment on, and recreate previous architectures and iterations of a project in order to see where problems first occurred. Testing and repairs can also take place without affecting active services or interrupting other key tasks.
By easing the process of finding and repairing problems, DevOps not only helps improve the quality of deployed code, but also reduces the amount of time needed to apply fixes. This ease can allow DevOps teams to address errors that may have previously been ignored due to time constraints. Needless to say, the more errors that an IT team can remove before code is deployed, the better!
Wide applicability
One of the biggest advantages of DevOps is that it can be applied throughout an IT pipeline. It can even be used for processes relating to troubleshooting and monitoring services following the point of deployment. In short, the direct benefits of investing in DevOps training can go far beyond just ‘Dev’ and ‘Ops’.
The key is to optimize reliability, efficiency, and value wherever possible while also establishing inclusive and widely collaborative workplace cultures. In a nutshell, DevOps teaches team members to think about and approach problems in a certain way: the DevOps way! At the same time, optimized clarity, accountability, and metrics tracking help DevOps practitioners highlight areas where positive change is possible and what kind of impact solutions are having. Many DevOps organizations will even devote time to coming up with new ideas on where and how to apply the methodology.
An active community of practitioners
Part of what makes DevOps so organic is its global practitioner community. Senior DevOps engineers are actively tackling the issues facing modern IT and making recommendations on DevOps tools, software, best practices, and so on. DevOps students will also find no shortage of subject matter experts, forums, whitepapers, tutor videos, and other assets to help them develop their understanding of the methodology.
We have already spoken about how DevOps enables continuous optimization and collaboration. However, by upskilling employees in DevOps using a course that acknowledges the value of the practitioner community, CIOs can make it so that their engineers are constantly in touch with what is happening on the front lines. In other words, they will have a direct link to further advances and ideas which can then be integrated into their projects.
Consider the amount of change we have seen in IT management and governance over the last decade. IT and digital are ever-evolving, as are customer and client expectations. Investing in DevOps training can help CIOs ensure that they are utilizing all the tools and best practices currently at their disposal.
Why study DevOps with Good e-Learning?
Good e-Learning is an award-winning online training provider, as well as a Trusted Education Partner for the DevOps Institute. Our e-courses are designed to give users a practical understanding of the subject matter while also preparing them to pass their certification exams on the first attempt.
Our courses come with a variety of engaging training tools, including knowledge checks, practice exam simulators, whitepapers, and other resources. We also have downloadable assets for studying on the move. Students can access courses via the free Go.Learn app, and our support team is fully qualified to answer questions on DevOps, DevSecOps, or anything else we cover. When a student is ready, they can also contact the support team to request a FREE exam voucher, as well as FREE resits via Exam Pledge.
Visit our website or speak to a member of our team today to find out more!
