DevOps for Startups: Agile is not Enough for App Development

In a world where technologies reinvent themselves every three years, there is always something new that makes it possible to create startup software in a more efficient and cost-effective way.

From a technological point of view, there are many technologies to speed up  startup development. For example, PWA technology allows developers to create a powerful cross-platform mobile app from an existing website. Docker containers eliminate time spent on environment tuning, making it possible to create and eliminate literally millions of software copies automatically. Users can continue working with the software while developers continue to seamlessly deliver updates without users even noticing something is being done on the server. No downtime. Users can enjoy each new available feature simply by restarting their Web app. Sounds good but this is the tip of this brilliant iceberg.

Sounds good but this is the tip of this brilliant iceberg. Apart from coding, a project needs infrastructure management, continuous monitoring, integration, and delivery, resource optimization, proper security measures, disaster recovery, and more.

Usually, these are divided between two different teams on a project—development and administration. Often, there is a gap between both development and administration teams. This is where hiring a DevOps team for your startup project makes sense.

DevOps extends the Agile approach uniting all stages into a smooth process. Here is how it looks:

DevOps is a needed addition when a project has the following requirements:

Increased productivity through improved communication.
DevOps sits solely neither in the developers’ nor in the administrators’ camp: they connect both teams ensuring each knows the other’s issues.

Improved team productivity through process automation.
DevOps is engaged in finding bottlenecks and automating routine jobs; this frees teams from tedious tasks. DevOps creates scripts to deploy testing environments automatically ensuring QAs tests software in real conditions. They also help with unit tests and regression testing, among many other things.  

Optimization of infrastructure performance and resource use.
DevOps engineers create tools for automated system performance monitoring. A skilled analysis helps reveal the resources an app neither uses nor needs. They also help determine optimal scalability scenarios and implement them.

Portability.
Often, third-party services permanently shut down; data centers increase prices or are unable to support app growth. In these cases, DevOps helps create scripts to port software seamlessly to a new data center or to a new service and oversee the migration process.

DevOps speeds up delivery time.
DevOps’ approach works well for startups who want to constantly optimize their software solution. It makes it possible to shorten delivery time and ensure a more sustainable app development for startups.

Once the software is live, DevOps backs up more effective resources management while saving maintenance expenses.

Finally: to prevent burnout, people cannot be fully engaged with both development and maintenance over a long time because it is difficult and time consuming to switch.