Opening the Chapter of DevOps Lifecycle
Presently software development and deployment are considered to be the vital part of businesses that are aiming to stay competitive and meet customer demands effectively. DevOps, short for Development and Operations, has emerged as a transformative approach that integrates development, testing, deployment, and operations into a seamless cycle. 
This approach not only accelerates the delivery of software but also enhances collaboration between teams, improves product quality, and enables continuous innovation. But are you aware that there are DevOps lifecycles? Yes, the DevOps lifecycle represents a structured framework designed to optimize software development processes through automation, iterative improvements, and close alignment with business objectives.
By breaking down traditional silos between development and operations, DevOps fosters a culture of continuous improvement and responsiveness to market changes. DevOps enables organizations to achieve faster time-to-market, higher-quality software releases, and improved collaboration across teams. This introduction sets the stage for exploring how each phase of the DevOps life cycle contributes to delivering robust software solutions efficiently and reliably.
Throughout this article, we will navigate through each phase of the DevOps lifecycle, from initial planning and coding to continuous integration, testing, deployment, and operations. Each stage plays a pivotal role in ensuring that software is developed efficiently, tested rigorously, and deployed seamlessly across various environments, including production. Furthermore, we will explore in depth the 7 C’s framework within the DevOps lifecycle as well. So without any further delay, let’s jump into this blog to learn more!
Proliferate about what is DevOps life cycles
Let’s now take a telescopic view of the DevOps lifecycle to understand more. The DevOps lifecycle is a set series of automated development processes comprising iterative, automated development or workflow run with a huge automated and iterative development lifecycle specially designed to optimize the delivery of the software product.
Moreover, the lifecycle of DevOps follows a continuous approach methodology that makes the symbol of the lifecycle as an infinite loop. This picture of loops indicates the iterative and collaborative approach of the DevOps lifecycle throughout the development process, which consists of the tools along with technological stacks for each set of the development process. Generally, this DevOps lifecycle begins with planning the development tasks accordingly to define the objective and appropriately assign the resources.
The development process period mainly involves coding and testing of the software, followed by the build stage where all the automated tools get complied with and packed code gets formatted into the deployment stage. Moreover, testing of the development task is carried out to make sure that the quality of the software is via rigorous automated and manual tests hence this overall validates the functionality, performance, and security aspects. Deployment automates the release of software into production environments using tools that promote consistency and reliability.
Throughout the DevOps life cycle, continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) principles ensure seamless integration of code changes and rapid delivery of updates to users. This iterative approach not only accelerates time-to-market but also improves collaboration between development and operations teams, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and efficiency in software development processes.
Disentangling how does DevOps lifecycle work
As we have taken a minute look at the planning section in the DevOps lifecycle phase, let’s take a brief overview of it. To begin with, the first process;
1. Plan: This is the first process, where the team collaborates and identifies the respective goals and feedback from the end-users. Then they move on to prioritizing development tasks along with operations activities which mainly involve defining the requirements of the project, setting up the goals, and establishing the timeline for the development and deployment cycles.
2. Code: The second one is code development where the developers use some tools along with plugins like Git to elate the development process which further helps them to avoid all the flaws practices of the development process.
3. Build: Now in this stage, once the coding is done, developers commit the code to the shared code repository with the help of build tools like Gradle and Maven.
4. Test: After the above process, the code is deployed to the testing environment first to carry out the several types of tests like, acceptance test, security test, integration test, and performance test with the help of tools like JUnit, Selenium to make sure that the software quality is carried out seamless.
5. Release: Once the build phases successfully pass all the tests, the operations team manages release scheduling and executes multiple deployments to production as required by the organization’s objectives and timelines.
6. Deploy: In the deployment stage, developers integrate infrastructure-as-code that helps to build the production environment and it gets released with the help of several other tools.
7: Operate: Once the release is live for customer use, the operations team manages server configuration and provisioning using tools such as Chef.
8. Monitor: During the monitoring stage, the DevOps pipeline is closely observed using data gathered from customer interactions and application performance. This comprehensive monitoring allows teams to identify bottlenecks that may affect the productivity of both development and operations teams.
Analyzing the 7 C’s of DevOps lifecycle
As we have seen above, the DevOps lifecycle is how it begins and ends. Now let’s break the entire section into 7 different phases and see the continuity at its core. So let’s jump into this to understand 7C’s:
1. Continuous development: The continuous development process is considered to play a vital role in describing the entire software development cycle. Since it mainly focuses on project coding and planning. During this phase major project requirements are discussed collaboratively with stakeholders and the development process of the product is maintained accordingly based on the customer requirements and feedback which is followed by broken down into minuscule components for continuous software development. Once everything gets settled down with the requirement and the business, the development team starts to code according to the project requirements. With respect to tools there are no specific tools for planning but the development team requires some tools for maintenance like GitLab, Jira, Subversion, etc., for use as version control.
2. Continuous Integration: Another one is CI or Continuous Integration, which is the most crucial part of the DevOps lifecycle. In this stage, all the updated code and features are developed followed by integration into the existing code. Additionally, bugs are discovered and pinpointed within the code throughout each phase, starting with unit testing, followed by necessary modifications to the source code. This ensures that integration remains a continuous process, with thorough testing conducted after every code commit. Furthermore, test requirements are also strategically planned during this phase. Tools that are typically used are GitLab, Jenkins, and Travis that are used to make the project workflow seamless with a more productive development process.
3. Continuous Testing: The third DevOps lifecycle stage is a continuous testing phase, which is before the integration procedure occurs. Most of the quality analyst developers continuously test the software for additional bugs or any issues that are present during the stage using Docker containers. If a bug or error is detected, the code is returned to the integration phase for necessary adjustments. Automation testing, facilitated by tools like Selenium, plays a crucial role in expediting the delivery of high-quality results, reducing time and effort. Furthermore, continuous testing improves the evaluation of test reports and lowers the provisioning and maintenance costs associated with test environments.
4. Continuous Deployment: The next process in the DevOps lifecycle is a continuous deployment where the final code is deployed finally on the production servers. Moreover, the continuous deployment includes configuration management to make the overall deployment of code on servers precise and sleek. Containerization tools ensure consistent deployment across development, testing, production, and staging environments, enabling continuous delivery of new features to production. Tools that are used for the continuous deployment are Chef and Puppet which make the deployment process sleek and consistent throughout the production development process. Moreover Docker and Vagrant are the other DevOps tools that are used in the industry to handle all the scalability of the continuous deployment process.
5. Continuous feedback: Continuous feedback has become essential for analyzing and enhancing application code. In this phase, customer behavior is regularly evaluated with each release to enhance future deployments. Businesses can choose between structured and unstructured feedback approaches. Structured methods involve surveys and questionnaires, while unstructured feedback is gathered from social media platforms and other informal channels. This phase is crucial for achieving continuous delivery and introducing improved versions of applications based on user insights.
6. Continuous monitoring: During this stage, the application’s performance and features are continually monitored to promptly detect system errors such as low memory or unreachable servers. This proactive monitoring allows the IT team to swiftly pinpoint issues affecting app performance and determine their underlying causes. If critical issues are identified, the application undergoes the entire DevOps cycle again to implement necessary solutions. Moreover, security vulnerabilities can be automatically identified and resolved during this phase.
7: Continuous operations: The final phase of the DevOps lifecycle focuses on minimizing planned downtime, such as scheduled maintenance. Traditionally, updates required servers to be taken offline, leading to increased downtime and potential losses. Continuous operations automate app launches and updates using tools like Kubernetes and Docker, eliminating downtime. This ensures uninterrupted service delivery and accelerates time-to-market by streamlining application deployment across multiple environments.
Sprinkling Conclusion of DevOps lifecycle with Pattem Digital
Writing down a summation script here, as we have seen that the DevOps lifecycle represents a comprehensive approach to the sleek software development and deployment, that overall emphasize the iterative improvement and collaboration between the development and operations teams. Also as per the DevOps lifecycle Diagram depicts the entire 7C’s lifecycle of the DevOps and each set of phases contributes to enhancing software quality, accelerating delivery, and responding swiftly to user feedback.
Swiftly moving towards understanding the leading DevOps development company, Pattem Digital where we hold the specialization in meeting the projects need with high standards of performance and quality. Pattem Digital optimizes workflows by using different DevOps tools and methodologies along the way to ensure minimal downtime but focuses relentlessly on core value delivery to clients in every industry, be it healthcare or finance. It has helped businesses build and prosper in an ever-evolving digital landscape through continuous empowerment at the edge of technological innovation.
