Author: Hardik Shah, Tech Consultant at Simform
Software quality has been a subject of focus in modern software development and deployment practices. It’s impossible to stand out in a highly competitive market without delivering high-quality products. To sustain your product, you constantly need excellent collaboration among the development and operations teams. DevOps methodology comes to the forefront as its core value focuses on continuous collaboration to rapidly deliver quality software/products.
With DevOps’ help, you can increase code quality by 38% and collaboration among teams. According to DevOps Trends Survey 2020, 61% of companies can deliver higher quality products to their clientele post DevOps implementation. These statistics show us that DevOps rapidly and significantly impacts software quality. So, how does DevOps make it happen? This blog aims to give a definite answer to the question as we analyze the role of DevOps in software quality.
6 Ways DevOps May Improve Software Quality
1. Emphasizes regular collaboration
Collaboration is at the heart of DevOps methodology, and that’s why if you adopt DevOps into your ecosystem, it will enable smooth cooperation between the development and operation teams. Furthermore, such collaboration keeps all groups informed about the current status of software development. So, the development teams will share the latest build with the QA team from the beginning, and the QA team can enforce continuous testing processes. These practices will result in robust and high-quality software delivery to your client base.
2. Focuses on automation
DevOps is a philosophy that concentrates a lot on automation in every software development lifecycle process, and the same applies to the case of testing. Here, automation testing will make way for manual testing, and the team will implement the procedures for the same from the beginning of the development phase. So, if you’re continuously checking for the tiniest errors in the software, there are more chances that feedback will reach developers before the production stage. As a result, the development team will correct them and release a final error-free version.
3. Gives importance to reliability
Reliability is a critical factor in deciding the overall software quality. If your philosophy or best practices promote reliability, then the chances are that you will end up with a robust and high-quality product. For example, DevOps is a methodology that emphasizes site reliability engineering best practices and enforces CI/CD. If that’s the case, reliability will remain intact during every phase. As a result, the software team can deliver a reliable and bug-free product, which translates to the expected highest possible quality.
4. Encourages real-time user feedbackÂ
DevOps is a methodology that relies on data and user feedback. It utilizes many tools and automation-based processes to collect data in real-time. Based on such data and user feedback, teams can improve their product or software before the final release. DevOps is an approach that helps you prioritize user experience, and as you know, it matters the most in the end. Therefore, you can plan the release cycle or the whole development process so that there’s a chance to incorporate user feedback and then improve the software quality on the fly.
5. Increases development speed
DevOps enables synchronization among the various departments involved in the software development process. So, you can increase the speed of development, deployment, and release. The prime reason is continuous feedback from the QA department, and the QA team has access to the latest build. So, there won’t be a dedicated waiting period for the release. In addition, DevOps brings innovation and enhances problem-solving capabilities to solve the errors as early as possible and then release a high-quality software product in the market.
6. Promotes innovative thinkingÂ
Since DevOps tries to bring all the teams involved in software development on the same page, they can have daily discussions on defining an innovative process that works well for the organization. As a result, there is no need to rely on traditional approaches. The teams can develop customized techniques to give them more fruitful results. Innovative thinking will also allow you to increase work productivity and release the software quickly. Some innovations may rely on parallel processing, infrastructure automation, CI/CD, containerization & orchestration, etc.
Wrapping up
The majority of the companies providing DevOps consultation services believe that DevOps is about making technological, cultural, and process shifts. The approach aims to refine the software development processes at every stage and hopes to deliver high-quality software rapidly by shortening the release cycle. The same applies to the testing stage, where DevOps enforces continuous testing, automation, innovation, and real-time feedback to ensure improvements in software quality.
