The DevOps train has arrived and Agile developers must hop on

DevOps have been an exciting shift in the technological landscape and if you haven’t already jumped on the bandwagon, perhaps it’s time your organization does.

Understandably, you can’t transition to DevOps if you don’t know what it is so start at the beginning. The goal, in a nutshell, is to enhance collaboration and cooperation between software developers and IT operatives, thus was how the name was probably born. One of the most important sentiments to remember is that DevOps is neither a tool nor technique. It’s a cultural change and encouraging IT professionals to adopt a new mindset as we collectively begin to drift from Waterfall methodologies.

The movement is becoming a more common winner among IT businesses and understanding its best practices can only bring more value to your company. Among those cited includes continue to refine the process and keep fueling the momentum, focus on performance, create tight feedback loops and redefine your skill sets.

Documentation is also important when discussing how to be Agile and implement the DevOps process. In fact, expert Chris Riley argues that it’s a necessity.

“The fact that documentation and governance have been synonymous with slow is a matter of historical baggage,” he writes. “The same automation we bring to software releases also can be applied to documentation. And DevOps documentation is not going away: it’s transforming.”

According to Riley, the sources of DevOps documentation involve code, configuration management script and application performance logs. Additionally, it includes infrastructure logs, alerting tools and component monitoring.

Continuous integration and delivery have emerged to be next chapters of the Agile, Scrum and DevOps book. But why should that matter? Why should enterprises keep tabs on solutions that enable CI further? Key benefits of Agile and Scrum include shorter delivery times, better quality and a high level of adaptability to deal with security, compliance and availability challenges.

Cloudbees, a provider of continuous delivery solutions powered by Jenkins CI, said “When you enable cheap, low-risk experimentation through continuous delivery, you can direct business investments with more information and uncover opportunities you would otherwise completely miss.”

But maybe the real extension of DevOps is DevSecOps. According to Gartner, what teams need to make way for is adding security professionals. Either way, DevOps, DevSecOps, these methodologies are here and it’s time to buy a ticket and board the train.