DevOps vs SDLC

DevOps vs SDLC ≥ At Snapbytes, we have been working on DevOps, SDLC, CI/CD pipelines, test automation, agile methodologies and similar topics for a few years now and we think we have a good understanding of these topics. Each month, we will share a new blog post that may be of interest to you. So grab a coffee, relax and enjoy our first installment, “DevOps vs SDLC”.

Need for Acceleration of Development Process

It is no longer a secret that software is everywhere and has become part of our daily lives. The ubiquity of software in our lives, regardless of time and space, has led to a never-ending race to deliver applications, products and services to customers faster. This is exactly where the need for DevOps emerged.

At its core, DevOps is an attempt to meet the need for speed. Whether you’re starting to build an app, fixing a bug, or trying to stay ahead of your competitors, DevOps is the rocket fuel to give you the momentum you need. All of this refers to the preparation time required to realize the product. How much time do you spend delivering an application to the end user? Or after committing a code, how long does it take for it to affect and change the final product? And how often do you do all this?

It is not only about speed and preparation time (although the gains in these areas are enormous…). Improving and automating your software development processes, saving time and energy, is also about modernizing your overall deployment infrastructure. The targeted system should be so efficient and agile that it can reduce costs and time-to-market, and increase the quality, visibility and efficiency of your products. This way, both your customers and your employees will be satisfied.

Evolution of DevOps

DevOps is not just about writing and developing and the operations associated with development. It is also an evolution of continuous delivery (CD) and continuous integration (CI), encompassing multiple processes and elements listed in the premises below.

• Continuous improvement
• Continuous distribution
• Addiction management
• Static code analysis
• Version control
• Test automation
• Configuration management
• Database pipelines
• Blue/green deployments
• Containers
• Express and store infrastructure as code
• Dashboards
• Process monitoring systems
• Culture

DevOps
‘like a big tree. Climbing to the top is certainly not easy and you are likely to pass over a few thorns along the way, but you will also find the sweetest berries along the way. You can never have two different DevOps strategy and this is precisely why it is so important to have a planned and customized development solution. Things to consider are the size of your organization, the experience of your teams, the resources you have and your overall business priorities.

SDLC Tools

SDLC tools include many tools that can be used in different categories in the software development process. Tools under many categories such as CI/CD, project management, static code analysis, version control systems, artifactory can be used in combination in the software development process. For example, CI/CD tools facilitate rapid testing and release management of software, while project management tools facilitate teamwork and allow you to track project progress.

Static code analysis tools can be used to improve code quality and ensure security, while version control systems make it easier for developers to work on the same code. Tools like Artifactory make it easier to manage and deploy software packages. Atlassian tools like Jira, Bitbucket, etc. allow you to use tools from many categories together and allow your team to monitor the process. The combined use of SDLC tools improves the quality and speed of the software development process, while reducing cost and risk.

To make our explanation more concrete, let’s look at an example scenario. Let’s say a software company decides to develop a software product and wants to manage this process with SDLC tools. Let’s take a step-by-step look at how to manage this software development process using Jira, Bitbucket, Confluence, Jenkins, Sonar Qube and Nexus Artifactory:

1. Jira for Project Management: Jira is a widely used tool for project management. In this example, we want to track all project management work using Jira. Therefore, we create a project in Jira and define all our teams there. At this stage, we can create a separate task board for each team. For example, one team may do frontend development while another team may do backend development. We can also create these task boards in Jira. We can also create a dashboard in Jira to track the progress of the project.
2. Bitbucket for Version Control: Bitbucket can be used as a version control system. At this stage, we create a repository on Bitbucket and manage all our code there. All our developers will have access to Bitbucket and manage their code there. We can also integrate Bitbucket with Jira. This way, the code of the tasks specified in our task boards in Jira can be managed in Bitbucket.
3. Confluence for Documentation Management: Confluence is a documentation management tool. At this stage, we can manage all our project documents in Confluence. For example, project requirements, design documents, technical documents, etc. we can manage all documents in Confluence. We can also integrate Confluence with Jira. This way, documents related to the tasks specified in Jira can be managed in Confluence.
4. Jenkins for CI-CD: Jenkins is a CI-CD tool. At this stage, we can automatically test and compile all our code using Jenkins. This ensures that bugs are detected early and code quality is improved. Jenkins can be integrated with Bitbucket, so our code is managed in Bitbucket
5. Nexus for Release and 3rd Party Package Management: Nexus is a tool for storing, managing and sharing source code, dependencies, build tools, tests and other files used in the software development process. To fulfill these functions, it creates a virtual repository and brings all software components together in one place. Developers can archive the components they upload to this repository, version them, share them with other teams and reuse them in other projects.
6. Sonar Qube for Static Code Analysis: SonarQube is an open source tool for code quality analysis in different languages (Java, C#, C/C++, JavaScript, Python, etc.). Code quality analysis helps developers fix code quality issues (e.g., security vulnerabilities, performance issues, code duplication, etc.) by identifying code quality issues present in the code and identifying the risks caused by these issues in the code. SonarQube has different features for code quality analysis. For example, detection of bugs, code quality issues and technical debt, tracking of code coverage (tested and untested code), analysis of documentation referring to code. Furthermore, SonarQube has an interface that visually represents the analysis results and helps developers to better understand their work.

DevOps vs SDLC ≥ Finally, we can use CI/CD tools to test and validate the code we create before we release it to end users. As in this example, we can create a CI/CD pipeline using Jenkins. This pipeline can track code changes in Bitbucket.

If we combine this process with the Sonar Qube, if we decide to open a Sonar Analysis binary in Jenkins, every time a commit comes to Bitbucket, a Sonar analysis can be run and this analysis can show us vulnerabilities, misuses and various issues in the code. This allows us to see and fix issues before they accumulate, and we can fix them immediately in the next commit. In addition to that, we can also follow some strategies in our version control system with feedback from Sonar.

For example, when a merge request comes in, we can run a Sonar analysis and block the merge request if the code quality does not meet our expectations. Finally, we can also manage our release processes by combining Jenkins and Nexus. We can create a Jenkins job, automatically throw the outputs to Nexus, tag these outputs with information such as Jenkins job number etc. and classify our releases. In this way, during the testing phase, we can easily access information such as which release came from the source code with exactly which revision and who is responsible for it.

Apart from release management, Nexus can be used as a tool for accessing 3rd party libraries that we use in our source code. We can assign the outsourced libraries we use in our source code to Nexus and let them reach the repository manager we have specified as a repository, such as build tools (e.g. maven, gradle, etc.). In this way, we have full control over the outsourced libraries we use in our product.

This also gives us security because we don’t use unknown, unwanted external libraries. All of these processes can be very time-consuming when carried out manually and the risk of missing errors is high. But using Jenkins, this process is automated and repeatable.

As a result, the SDLC tools used in the software development process help us to manage, monitor and optimize each step. In our example, we covered project management with Jira, version control with Bitbucket, documentation management with Confluence, artifactory management with Nexus artifactory, static code analysis with Sonar Qube and CI/CD processes with Jenkins. The combination of these tools optimizes the entire process of a software project, helping us to produce faster, safer and higher quality software.

A deep understanding of the benefits and complexities of each tool requires a certain level of expertise, and this expertise will make planning the right route for you much easier and more efficient. At Snapbytes, we help our customers by assessing their current SDLC maturity, planning their DevOps roadmap and guiding them through the journey. Contact us to learn more about how you can benefit from DevOps practices and principles .