Making sure every device on your network has the latest software, updates, and patches can be a big task. Employee expectations are higher than ever. They are used to smartphone and tablet apps that update automatically without intervention or with the click of a button. They have become accustomed to regular updates and patches with little hassle.
In addition, there is a startling increase in the number of news reports about so-called Zero Day breaches where known software flaws are exploited by cyber criminals before patches are deployed.
Continuous delivery is necessary to deliver apps and app updates faster and more frequently. This puts a bigger burden on IT teams to meet consumer expectations and security obligations. It has become critical to reducing the time between iteration and delivery of production-grade software in today’s competitive environment.
Delivering app faster means providing this continuous delivery process. Your DevOps team should focus on these three practices in order to deliver what your customers and your stakeholders expect:
Continuous Development & Continuous Delivery
With continuous delivery, each code change is built, tested, and pushed to a staging environment. This speeds up the production process so that each change is production ready. Continuous deployment can happen automatically once it clears testing and meets delivery standards.
Benefits Of Continuous Delivery:
- Automates the software release process
The code can be built, tested, and prepared for release to production. Software delivery is more efficient and happens more quickly. - Improves Productivity
Continuous testing and delivery help free up developers from manual tasks, which cuts down on error rates and fatigue. - Identifies flaw faster
This helps reduce and catch bugs and flaws before customer delivery. Automation makes for easier – and more frequent – testing of the entire code. - Delivers apps faster
Continuous delivery helps your team push out updates more rapidly and more frequently. You will always have development-ready builds that have passed through testing.
Faster App Delivery With A Three-Step Process
To get started, DevOps teams need to follow a three-step process: Set goals, automate, and test frequently.
#1. It starts with setting goals
With pressure to push code out more rapidly, we have all seen examples of apps that weren’t ready for the market but somehow made it there. As you start, it’s important to set realistic goals for delivery. These goals need to balance software quality and reliability with speed to market.
#2. Automate anything you can
Too many processes are still being done manually. App deployment, environment provisioning, and configuration are still done with manual intervention. This slows down the process at the same time it increases error rates.
Continuous integration and app release automation can streamline your process. Test automation and on-demand provisioning can help with workflow. Integrating systems and processes using tools like JFrog and Docker Registries across your production and delivery lines is key to efficiency.
Make sure your integration solution can handle end-to-end solutions to cover the full life cycle to manage development, vulnerability analysis, artifact flow control, and distribution. In addition, make sure it allows for audit capabilities, tech tracking, and collaborative planning.
#3. Test, Test, Test
This pressure to get builds out faster and faster can lead to shortcuts in testing. It might mean testing only the new section of code rather than folding in the new code and testing it all together. It might mean testing the technical functions but skipping UI and UX testing. These are steps you simply cannot afford to skip.
Developers and testers need to collaborate to identify repetitive tasks in order to automate. The goal is to automate everything you can so that your team can focus on high-level projects.