5 best practices for getting started with DevOps

5 best practices for getting started with DevOps


Andrew Magill. CC BY 2.0
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Andrew Magill. Modified by Opensource.com. CC BY 4.0

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DevOps often stymies early adopters with its ambiguity, not to mention its depth and breadth. By the time someone buys into the idea of DevOps, their first questions usually are: "How do I get started?" and "How do I measure success?" These five best practices are a great road map to starting your DevOps journey.

1. Measure all the things


Before you change anything, think about what kinds of outcomes you expect from your DevOps transformation. When you're further into your DevOps journey, you'll enjoy a rich array of near-real-time reports on everything about your service. But consider starting with these two metrics:


2. Get your process off the ground

DevOps success requires an organization to put a regular (and hopefully effective) process in place and relentlessly improve upon it. It doesn't have to start out being effective, but it must be a regular process. Usually that it's some flavor of agile methodology like Scrum or Scrumban; sometimes it's a Lean derivative. Whichever way you go, pick a formal process, start using it, and get the basics right.





3. Visualize your end-to-end workflow

There is tremendous power in being able to see who's working on what part of your service at any given time. Visualizing your workflow will help people know what they need to work on next, how much work is in progress, and where the bottlenecks are in the process.

You can't effectively limit work in process until you can see it and quantify it. Likewise, you can't effectively eliminate bottlenecks until you can clearly see them.


4. Continuous all the things

DevOps promises a dizzying array of compelling automation. But Rome wasn't built in a day. One of the first areas you can focus your efforts on is continuous integration (CI). But don't stop there; you'll want to follow quickly with continuous delivery (CD) and eventually continuous deployment.


Another "continuous" that doesn't get enough attention is continuous improvement. That's as simple as setting some time aside each day to ask your colleagues: "What small thing can we do today to get better at how we do our work?" These small, daily changes compound over time into more profound results. You'll be pleasantly surprised! But it also gets people thinking all the time about how to improve things.

5. Gherkinize


Start on your journey

Don't be discouraged by getting started with your DevOps practice. It's a journey. And hopefully these five ideas give you solid ways to get started.


About the author

Magnus Hedemark - Magnus has been in the IT industry for over 20 years, and a technology enthusiast for most of his life. He's presently Senior Director Software Engineering at UnitedHealth Group. In his spare time, Magnus enjoys photography and paddling canoes.