Optimization of IT along the entire software life cycle

Digitization is in full swing. Technological developments have a high market penetration and determine how we communicate and consume. Speed is the new currency and determines whether companies can prevail over the competition in the course of digitization. In order to reduce time-to-market many times over and increase IT performance, DevOps is one of the leading ways of working in IT in the future.

DevOps as an approach to minimizing time-to-market

DevOps is made up of the two terms Development and Operations and refers to the approach of creating an environment in which software development and IT operations are united and share responsibility for the software lifecycle. In this context, DevOps represents a combination of a mindset, a culture, technical practices and tools. Through a set of different measures, it aims to break down silos between software development and operations, establish a new culture, and thus enable continuous delivery of software. Through communication, continuous integration and continuous delivery, automation and close cooperation, the aim is to bring together all the experts needed to plan, develop, test, release and operate the software in order to promote shared responsibility for the entire software lifecycle. The effects are significantly shorter release cycles, lower time-to-market, significantly fewer failures, higher test coverage and more satisfied employees and customers.

DevOps and Continouus Delivery in Practice? A major bank shows the change within one year.

  • Instead of 4 weeks, a test run took only 6 hours.
  • Time to market improved from 20 weeks to 4 days.
  • The test coverage increased from 30% to 80%.
  • The release cycle shortened from four annual releases to every 3 weeks.
  • DevOps and Continouus Delivery also ensured system stability, so that no outages occurred in 2014.

DevOps in the automotive industry

Long gone are the days when a car consisted only of hardware. Today, the car is controlled by over 50 control units through software and, with the help of digital services such as Apple Music or Last Mile Navigation, forms a digital ecosystem for its users. As a rule, IT at car manufacturers is classically organized in silos with their own, sometimes competing targets, which promotes irregular software updates and long deployment times. Tesla in particular, through its pioneering role in over-the-air updates (OTA updates), is creating pressure to release software updates much more frequently than car manufacturers have done so far.

Back in 2013, Scania addressed this issue by introducing cross-functional DevOps teams and automating builds, tests and deployments, enabling teams to deploy multiple times a day if needed. But suppliers to automotive manufacturers can also benefit from the approach, as evidenced by Urban Science, an automotive retail performance expert. Adopting DevOps not only better managed the complexity of the deployment and release process, meeting release deadlines and accelerating deployment. It also increased test coverage through automation and thus system stability.

Consileon as your partner in DevOps transformation

The transformation to DevOps is a continuous process and requires a vision and clear goals to be achieved by DevOps in the company. It needs an adjustment of the company processes and the support of the management so that the transformation succeeds.

We advise you on whether DevOps is the right approach for your company and whether a transformation is feasible and effective. We also support your project from the initiation of the transformation through the establishment of effective measures to stabilization, so that the desired effects of DevOps are achieved quickly and sustainably.