Credit: Skelia
DevOps have emerged as a great tool for automating many web development processes, speeding up product launches, and controlling web product quality. It is seen as a major driver of digital transformation today, giving businesses of all sizes a seamless framework for improving their processes and operations.
However, setting up the DevOps framework in the workplace is a costly and lengthy project. Besides, things get even harder if you have a distributed team and can’t unify everyone under one roof and a single IT infrastructure. Thus, using DevOps outsourcing services may be a good idea in this case, giving you the combined benefit of automation, affordability, and flexibility.
What Does DevOps Offer?
First, you need to conduct a thorough evaluation of the DevOps toolkit and your business processes. Such an audit will help you determine the need for DevOps implementation, giving you a clear idea of the benefits you may expect. At present, companies note improvements in the following areas after they transition to DevOps:
- Time and money savings
- Improved security
- Faster time to market of their digital products
- Automated and customized quality monitoring
- Business resiliency
- Better agility
- Innovation-focused business processes
- Rapid delivery of error-proof products
- Scalability of web solutions
- Performance improvements
If you notice flaws in any of these points and want to attain a higher standard of business performance, DevOps can be an answer. So, it’s time to consider implementing DevOps, at least in its outsourced variant. Here’s how you can do it.
Credit: Auxis
What to Expect from DevOps Outsourcing?
Adopting the DevOps mindset should not necessarily come with the fundamental organizational transformation. If you have no money for setting up an in-house DevOps team, you can opt for DevOps as a service. In other words, you use the DevOps functionality on a subscription basis, utilizing the resources you need and using the provider’s skills and talents for the DevOps setup. Usually, these same service providers include complementary practices in their offerings like platform engineering, which one top firm defines it as “the practice of building and maintaining a comprehensive, proprietary software development tool — usually called an Internal Development Platform (IDP) — that provides a company’s engineering team with everything they need to deploy applications.
So, once you consider several outsourcing variants and look through the available variants, check whether your provider can guarantee:
- Better consistency in software deliveries.
- Automation of routine business tasks.
- IT architecture enhancement and optimization.
- Reduction of system complexity for speeding up the workflow.
- Prompt and productive troubleshooting.
Steps to Effective DevOps Outsourcing
Though there is no universal approach and recommendations for DevOps outsourcing, you should focus on the key milestones. These points are vital for successful DevOps integration, ensuring that you reap all benefits of this change for your organizational performance and productivity.
#1 Set an organizational framework using the DevOps TOM
A TOM, which is an acronym for Target Operating Model, is a key concept in the transition to DevOps. It includes the entire network of processes, people, functions, and tools that your DevOps approach should unify and automate. Using TOM elements, you can adjust your system’s governance and achieve much better organizational outcomes.
#2 Assess organizational readiness
Now that the strategic roadmap for DevOps implementation is in place, you should assess the provider’s capabilities and your organizational readiness for the change in all affected areas. For instance, if you want to introduce CI/CD tools in the workflow, you need to check the infrastructure gaps and flaws that require fine-tuning.
It’s also vital to check the organizational capabilities, like cloud servers, quality assurance processes, automation approaches, and other tools that will lay the basis for DevOps. If you don’t have any critical process components, your DevOps provider will assist in the smooth setup to achieve maximum DevOps value.
#3 Engage the team
DevOps is a cultural mindset in a company that requires fundamental changes in the team. So, you need to set the ground for team transition to a new culture, which is best achieved by assigning change agents and process champions. The team may also be complemented with a provider’s expert who trains the assigned change agents and prepares them for broader DevOps knowledge dissemination.
This arrangement makes the change smoother, as team members, not senior management, handle it. Besides, the change agents conduct on-site training and education on DevOps use, empowering staff and reducing their resistance to change.
#4 Negotiate the pricing with the DevOps provider
The final aspect of the DevOps outsourcing setup is financial. You need to agree on a mutually convenient work model with the provider that fits you financially and organizationally. For instance, you can go for a time and material (T&M) arrangement that presupposes only the provision of tools for DevOps setup in your organizational settings. Another option is a dedicated team model, which presupposes the collaboration between your organization and the provider’s team on the right DevOps setup.
Customization Is Power
The best about DevOps outsourcing is the unlimited customization potential it offers. At present, you can tailor the DevOps use to all business needs, scaling the services up and down the way that fits your organization’s arrangement and purposes. The options you can include in the DevOps package are:
- Strategic consulting and planning for DevOps integration.
- Cloud service implementation.
- Infrastructural automation.
- Management of an optimal DevOps configuration.
- The introduction of CI/CD components in your workflow.
Using DevOps is always a customizable endeavor, giving you many options to consider at all steps of business growth and automation. One thing is for sure: using DevOps is always a path to innovation, process acceleration, and business workflow improvement. So, it’s worth considering for all businesses dealing with software development, as it offers answers to all problems and process bottlenecks, giving you end products of higher quality.
