DevOps, Continuous Delivery – It’s All About Automation

DevOps.com – Brendan Hayes – 9/1/17

[Ed. note: Byline by Brendan Hayes, Advisor, DevOps Solutions Marketing, CA Technologies]

What’s interesting is that the same premise can be applied to many of the things that promise to make software development easier, faster and cheaper. DevOps, continuous delivery, continuous testing—all rely on automation to be successful.

DevOps, of course, requires more than just automation—as it’s also a cultural shift—but automation plays a huge role. The three main components of successful DevOps are commonly cited as tools (or technology), process and people (or culture). Automation is the primary goal of the first two: tools that enable you to automate previously manual tasks, and then establishing the processes that allow you to take advantage of this automation.

The same can be said of continuous delivery or continuous testing. Continuous testing relies on being able to automatically generate test cases, automatically create virtualized testing environments and create automated calls for testing.

The premise of a modern software factory also relies on automation. Any modern factory, whether it’s producing cars or toothbrushes, strives to improve efficiencies by eliminating as many manual tasks as possible.

The fact that software development and operations are lagging behind other industries in terms of automating the production of its goods (i.e., software) is maybe a bit ironic, given that software development is typically seen as more technologically advanced.

https://devops.com/devops-continuous-delivery-automation/