7 DevOps Myths - Busted

There are plenty of DevOps myths circulating the developers’ community. This is no surprise, considering how much excitement the DevOps concept has brought over the recent years.

The DevOps methodology can provide significant positive effects for organizations when implemented properly. It can lower costs, boost efficiency, and make the work of development teams more streamlined.

However, in order to grasp the strength of this process, it is necessary to recognize what DevOps represents. That’s why, in this article, we address some of the most popular DevOps myths.

Myth 1: DevOps is all about CI/CD

One of the biggest misconceptions about DevOps is that it’s the same thing as CI/CD. The truth is that continuous integration and delivery are the key components of DevOps.

DevOps focuses on the culture and responsibility in a team. It emphasizes the need for everyone on the team to take part in each other’s tasks. This improves collaboration and communication in the team.

On the other hand, CI/CD enables this culture with software and tools that emphasize automation. You can see them as a means to an end.

Myth 2: DevOps means NoOps

NoOps describes the concept where the cloud infrastructure is so automated, that there is no need to manage it.

NoOps is considered as the next evolution of DevOps as a development model. Just like DevOps, its goal is to improve software delivery, but by allowing developers to focus on application development instead of infrastructure and maintenance.

By using machine learning and artificial intelligence, you can automate the setup, deployment, and monitoring processes, getting closer to NoOps.

Myth 3: Automation eliminates all bottlenecks

Automation is one of the biggest benefits that DevOps provides. But it’s not a silver bullet that will solve all your problems.

A continuous delivery process enables teams to roll out new features quickly. And, get the feedback they need really fast. This, of course, means that you have to ensure the product’s quality. Moreover, you have to take care of how well it runs and its performance when scaling. You also need to ensure smooth production deployments.

Automating your CI/CD pipelines helps eliminate the bottlenecks between code commit and deploy. But, this is just one stage of the software delivery process. Unless developers and testers are in a partnership, you won’t be able to resolve all your problems. It’s likely that you’ll only move any bottlenecks to another stream.

Myth 4: One-size-fits-all continuous delivery pipeline

The idea that you can have one process that fits all teams and companies is impossible, contrary to popular belief. Every organization has different needs and requirements. Even projects in the same organization need different continuous delivery pipelines.

You can have projects that need only two to three environments. For example, development, test, and production environments with frequent deployments. Another project can require more environments since it has multiple stages in the software delivery cycle.

This is why the continuous delivery pipeline should represent the release process that the company is already using.

Myth 5: DevOps is all about tools

Conversations about DevOps are mostly focused around which tools your company is using. They then turn into philosophical battles about what are the best tools. Instead, we should be communicating about the bigger picture, the business value DevOps brings to your company.

DevOps means focusing on culture, mindset, and how individuals work together. Only after should you be choosing the right tools for your processes. Teams often look in the large ecosystem of tools trying to find the perfect solution at the beginnings. They build DevOps pipelines for a very long time, that should be redone once completed.

An Atlassian research showed that the two main factors to implement DevOps successfully are the right tools and the right people.

Myth 6: Software release is the same as in Amazon/Facebook/Google

Many world-leading companies have adopted DevOps for its benefits and flexibility. Looking at these company’s success stories, we, of course, look up to their achievements. We do this without realizing their context and the steps they made to become that successful.

One thing is for sure – these organizations chose and built the tools and processes that worked best for them at the time. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to follow these organizations. Moreover, what they did won’t magically work for our business as well.

We should learn from them and find new ways to innovate and grow. Explore and find the right processes and tools that define our problem space. What will bring success to our particular business? This is what DevOps is all about.

Myth 7: Release all the time

The idea of frequent releases has companies worried about not releasing their software continuously enough. “Ship often” has become the industry standard. However, this doesn’t specify the time. It may be every two to three weeks, or it may be several times a day.

The most important thing is that you achieve the team confidence that enables you to release new software when required. CD is the ability to release code from the main branch and feel confident in it. The idea of DevOps is that your code should be releasable anytime.

So remember, continuous delivery doesn’t mean you should release as often as you can but gives you the ability to release as often as you want. How often should be up to your company’s decision.

Wrapping up

We hope this article helped you bust some of the most popular DevOps myths that swirl around. Don’t let such misunderstandings hinder the progress of your team. Implementing DevOps can help your company improve productivity and create better products, so don’t miss out on these benefits due to these DevOps myths.