Startups often fail due to incompetence, inability to roll out releases on time, interrupted internal communication, lack of insight into the customer and internal barriers to communication.
One key process can fill all those gaps and more.
That’s DevOps.
Simply put, DevOps is an amalgamation of:
Let’s look at a few reasons why it makes sense for startups/scaleups to use DevOps starting day one and the many benefits of doing so.
DevOps enables consistency in the software development life cycle so that code changes don’t impact production. Unplanned application downtime and production outages cost startups in terms of both time and money and DevOps helps prevent them.
DevOps-powered workflow orchestration can speed up application cycle times by three times or more and lead to faster time-to-market, reduced costs and better customer service. When all teams follow the same standardized software development and releases, teams can more accurately predict timelines and accomplish on-time delivery.
DevOps can lead to measurable gains in software quality by enabling catching bugs before a product is released into the market. That also brings down the cost of customer service, code patching and wiping out some applications entirely.
With the iterative product development process, developers and testers discover and remove bugs sooner and don’t let them penetrate the production phase.
Startups are interested in financially-based metrics to get off the ground and even scale up. Through automation, cost-cutting and improved efficiency, DevOps directly impacts the bottom line and even introduces new streams of revenue through innovation and digitization.
DevOps inherently increases communication and collaboration across departments such as IT operations, development, sales, and finance, closing gaps in reporting. This leads to the prevention of costly mistakes in the initial stages of application development and patching.
Great collaboration also means tied-together teams that minimize friction and work together toward a shared goal.
In a DevOps approach, an IT operations team supplies a common set of virtual machine images for developer groups to automate. As such, commonly used environments create a baseline for all developer groups to follow, and related risks can be mitigated and avoided altogether.
DevOps create a single, shared view of the customer shared by development, manufacturing, sales and marketing teams. That insight into the customer enables envisioning and executing new products to holistically support the customer journey and enhance customer experience.
New product development leads to new business and organic revenue growth when it’s powered by organic insights into the customer, shared across the organization.
Customer satisfaction is one of the key ingredients in a successful startup recipe. DevOps, with its continuous and frequent reporting mechanisms, takes into account customer feedback and enhances customer satisfaction.
By helping create a transcendent customer experience through customer transactions automation, DevOps can help startups excel with digital technologies in their arsenal. By innovating faster, startups can beat competitors and enhance customer lifetime value.
By enabling agility, actionable insights and customer centricity, DevOps enables startups and businesses to innovate faster than competitors and gain an edge in the market. Continuous innovation fueled by customer needs can mean accelerated business growth and a healthy bottom line.
DevOps accelerates development and ensures fewer errors. Moreover, DevOps tasks can be automated. Continuous integration automates the testing process, freeing up software developers to focus on tasks that require creativity and can’t be automated.
Using a DevOps environment eliminates the need for data transfer between environments and debugging tools and scalable infrastructure accelerate the development process.
DevOps can make teams in a startup more agile and flexible by eliminating pigeonhole sight and enabling a change in direction when needed. Often startups get outcompeted because of getting late to the market. With increased team agility, you can make product changes sooner and hit the market with an updated or better one.
DevOps can automate mundane tasks, freeing up time for innovative thinking and execution. Enabling focus on areas that matter in the long run can prove substantially lucrative for your start-up in the long run.
DevOps allows startups to save abundantly on time and costs through automation in this day and age when early-stage startups race to reach the market and more scalable ones struggle to stay there.
Recovering from failure is a cost-intensive pursuit. Product-related issues can often stretch up to hours or even days, taking up bandwidth that can be spent toward innovative thinking. DevOps eliminates mistakes in product development and enables error-free delivery on time.
Implement DevOps in your startup from day one to enjoy all the benefits of it in the long run. If you’re still unsure about DevOps, reach out to us at KiwiTech and we’d love to walk you through how we’ve helped startups and scaleups increase agility with our DevOps services.