Managing the Obscure Boundaries Between Development, QA, and DevOps

As technology has advanced so have the processes with IT organizations. DevOps is fast-becoming the pinnacle framework for software development companies with the promise increased business agility, accelerated product delivery, and higher product quality. Moving away from the traditional waterfall approach that included labor-intensive tasks such as manual software testing, DevOps streamlines, automates, and shortens the development life cycle.

This has become a necessity in today’s increasing competitiveness in the software app market. The transition of software practices encompasses more than just process change or the adoption of different tools. People sit at the heart of efficient processes and DevOps is built on the foundation of eliminating barriers between roles.

Modernized Characters in a Modern Process

The success of DevOps starts with a refreshed mindset regarding key roles within the software life cycle. This involves having the right people with the right skills who are collectively willing to adapt, communicate, and collaborate.

This is vastly different from previous business models where development and QA resources would work in silos unaware of each other’s roadblocks and often lacked clarity of the business requirements’ context. Every role was distinct as work passed along the assembly line. DevOps has transformed philosophies and responsibilities to achieve enhanced velocity.

Development

Both past and present processes start with development getting business requirements. However, in a DevOps environment, these requirements are not in lengthy documents with a deadline that is several months in the future as you would find in a waterfall approach. Development is planned in user stories with 2 – 4 week sprints in which requirements are defined for delivery. These requirements provide direction on how to build the software logic in the most efficient and practical way.

QA

Quality assurance engineers keep their focus on software quality and use a combination of automated and manual testing while ensuring adherence to the initial business requirements. Traditionally, QA received a build from development at which point, a series of testing began and could take up to 2 weeks (or more) to complete. Prior to receiving the build for testing, QA had little, if any, interaction with the development stage.

Today, QA is more aligned with development, and it gets involved in the process from the beginning. QA also embraces more test automation services that involve pre-testing and post-testing checks to achieve as much code coverage as possible. Automation also requires a new skill set and standardization of testing environments.

DevOps

DevOps is the merging of development and operations, which requires a change in both technology and culture. Oftentimes organizations create DevOps as an aside to development and operations, which defeats the purpose. Companies must be prudent with the adoption of DevOps because new roles, labels, and titles don’t necessarily bring about real change.

The DevOps methodology integrates the functions of software development and operations within the same cycle. The goal is to improve collaboration across teams and deliver better experiences internally and to the end-customer. To achieve this, a high level of collaboration is needed between the major stakeholders in the software development process, being dev, QA, and operations.

How do Development and Quality Assurance Fit in DevOps?

In DevOps, developers, and QA both play equally important roles. In fact, every actor in the process is responsible for the timeliness and quality of deliverables. This makes the boundaries of roles porous. While titles such as developer and QA are the same, their scope in roles has increased. From the outset of defining requirements, test cases are created at the development and QA level.

The Developer’s Role in DevOps

Development now has a greater emphasis on automating the testing, build, and deployment tasks and a more intimate knowledge of the continuous integration cycle. And it requires a more forward-thinking attitude where developers need to consider dependencies and environments that go beyond the individual’s pc. Gone are the days of using the old excuse of “well, it works on my machine”. After building the code and doing initial tests, developers then promote the code package to the next environment, which is typically the testing environment.

For developers, it is no longer just creating code from requirements. They need to encapsulate testing methods and provide continuous monitoring as well. Engagement with testing is more extensive than before, which has been a catalyst for incorporating automated testing. Having developers think like testers is an added step in ensuring better product quality.

The QA Role in DevOps

DevOps QA has transitioned to a more strategic role in helping a team build robust software. As the developers’ roles and mindset has changed, so has that of DevOps QA engineer. They need to be able to test an application using a range of tools while also being capable of fixing code.

Although not every aspect of testing can be automated, it’s not practical to stick to manual testing and still be agile. Automation is crucial for everyday testing and for automating regression testing. And if QA struggles to adopt this change, the quality of the product will degrade, and bottlenecks will accumulate in the software life cycle. A QA strategy using best practices is highly relevant and key to achieving superior product quality.

What Are the Benefits and Difficulties in DevOps Management?

When implemented and adopted efficiently, considerable benefits can be achieved with DevOps. However, it is not a silver bullet for every organization and every team. It doesn’t come without its challenges.

Here are notable advantages as well as the difficulties that come managing an effective DevOps process:

Benefits

• Product quality is much higher with test cases defined early on and testing points added in the development process. Additionally, automation constantly checks new code hasn’t impacted core functionality or broken core dependencies.
• Product stability allows teams to spend less time on support and security issues. A perpetual cycle of ongoing bugs and fixes is frustrating for dev and QA, as well as the customer. Stability means that the DevOps team can spend more time on developing new features and skilling up on new technologies. Enhanced expertise means the product improves and staff turnover remains low.
• Deployment speed increases so developers are able to deploy updates or new features more regularly as opposed to developing enhancements once a month or twice a year.
• If all the above are realized throughout the process, the customer satisfaction rate increases with having a stable, feature-rich app.

Challenges

• Having a control and command leadership style doesn’t fit in well with a true DevOps environment. It relies on more than one mind to solve, create, and deliver. Teams are connected and should encourage innovation and inspiration while creating a space where people feel safe to share thoughts and engage in creating solutions.
• Poor product management strategy can hinder speed, reliability, and consistency. This would be the antithesis of what DevOps is about as it’s meant to give companies the competitive edge with great software delivery. A solid strategy involves planning out new features, knowing the customers’ needs as well as the competitive landscape. It is important to reduce risk while maximizing results.
• Poor design and development can make or break efforts. There have been significant changes in software engineering and it’s important to stay abreast of these changes. Examples include having an updated technology stack, moving away from monolithic architectures, and exploring and utilizing microservices. Managing outdated and cumbersome software doesn’t lend itself well to a DevOps environment.

Tips for Efficient Management

To be successful in DevOps, you need a good foundation to keep all parts of the process moving while having transparency across the environment. Some useful tips can help key players ensure efficiency in managing the DevOps process.

• Focus on communication. Having a pool of resources working in a fast and adaptable environment needs proper communication and visibility of all moving parts.
• Never underestimate the importance of testing. Testing across different environments and configurations is critical to product stability.
• Size does matter. Small cycles, small projects, and small teams foster agility, trust, and operational efficiency.
• Stay realistic but relevant. While it may be tempting to throw too much at a DevOps process too quickly, it can backfire. Strive for constant improvement but make sure there is sufficient time without putting unnecessary pressure and expectations on the team.

Conclusion

DevOps is the future of software development companies. It brings teams together to support each other. Roles overlap but it allows for the creation of multidisciplinary teams while nurturing the talent of high performers. When DevOps works well, it works great. People at all levels of the company benefit when everyone can deliver the best results to the customer.

DevOps is a journey, and the benefits are not realized overnight. Knowing that teams can be multiskilled allows for a shared understanding, and increased collaboration and innovation. DevOps and the roles within highlight it’s an environment of continuous improvement for people and product.