Outsourcing Software Development - The DevOps Approach

We all know that DevOps has gone from Silicon Valley to mainstream IT, with more than 80 percent of larger organizations and about 70 percent of SMBs adopting DevOp approaches, according to RightScale’s 2016 State of the Cloud Report.

Sunil Mavadia of XebiaLabs, in a recent TechBeacon article, says, “The enormous interest in DevOps right now is being driven by a need to reduce time-to-market, cope with multi-channel apps and meet rising customer expectations. Increased competition and lower barriers to entry are forcing enterprises to plan for greatly accelerated delivery cycles.”

In a 2015 IDC report – DevOps and the Cost of Downtime: Fortune 1000 Best Practice Metrics Quantified – two-thirds of those surveyed at Fortune 1000 companies expect DevOps to improve customer experience; almost as many are looking for it to lower IT costs. Other outcomes that place high on the list of expectations include improved productivity, higher profits and improved IT employee satisfaction.

The Case for DevOps Is Strong

In essence, with a DevOps software team, everyone is part software developer, part operations team, part business analyst. The roles blur, but the results can be richer for the experience. A DevOps-based operation strives for an environment where building, testing and releasing software moves quickly and often. Developers take ownership of the coding, while Operations finds ways to help the developing team write, test and launch code efficiently. This close collaboration is compatible with the goals and benefits of quick-starting software development outsourcing.

DevOps emphasizes collaboration, with development and operations working closely together toward shared, customer-oriented objectives. You can get this same mindset from your team when you outsource to the right software development provider. You’ll find that DevOps comes naturally to these outsourced teams, where collaboration is the key and the customer is always the main focus.

In fact, the DevOps mindset is so compatible with many world-class software outsourcing teams that you can expect to see such benefits as:

• Continuous software delivery
• Fewer complex issues to repair
• Faster problem resolution
• Quicker feature delivery
• Operating environments with additional stability
• More time to increase value, instead of maintenance

The advantages of outsourcing software development are certainly appealing (i.e. a dedicated and highly experienced team, cost savings, a faster ramp up, etc.), but when you add to that the DevOps philosophy, the combination makes a very compelling statement.

A Natural Fit

DevOps comes naturally for the right outsourced software development teams. An immersive DevOps-type experience is at the heart of what they do and expect. They understand and implement the modular, many-small-things approach of DevOps thinking, to help make your software outsourcing initiative more successful. In fact, Accelerance’s software development teams successfully follow the DevOps model, and produce the best work with high standards.

Without a doubt, the DevOps approach by a software development team is an indicator that the right culture is in place for a highly productive, creative engineering environment. Contact us to learn how you can work with Accelerance (at no cost), to easily find and outsource to a DevOps-focused software development team.