Major DevOps Challenges and Issues

DevOps is all the rage right now in the software development industry. Being one of the most productive and effective development practices, DevOps is already implemented in various top tech firms and many more are considering it.

Although the results are all rosy, the road is very thorny. So, before you decide to hop on this trend, you must know how treacherous the road is. It is important to know what kind of roadblocks or barriers you might face along the way.

We are going to discuss the most common yet important DevOps challenges that companies face and how to resolve them.

Top 12 DevOps Challenges

1. Overpowering the DevOps Psyche

In the software industry, companies can gain a competitive edge through innovation. Therefore they offer innovative features and functionalities with their software applications.

Now, the responsibility of making these innovations falls on the shoulders of development as well as operations teams. And that is the first challenge you will face while adapting DevOps.

The very purpose of both teams contradicts each other. That ought to cause friction which might result in increased expenses, delivering handovers, and prolonged feedback loops.

Solution:

The vision is to make both departments work together. A DevOps engineer is tasked with the responsibility of integrating the development and operations teams all the while reducing the extra workload of the company.

Once you understand where the development teams’ work ends and where the operation teams’ work begins, you will have solved this challenge.

2. Continuous Delivery

Let's say you have thoroughly analyzed the DevOps practices. You understand all the dos and don’ts and you also have arranged for all the resources like CI tooling and delivered channels your employees would need for implementing DevOps practices.

Even after all of these, one thing could go wrong and that is failing to make your team aware of what it takes to make a swift and continuous delivery.

Solution:

To overcome this issue, every company must have a good understanding of how continuous delivery works.

Continuous delivery means carrying out a defined set of work without hindering the workflow. It is up to you to clearly explain to your team your ideal notion of continuous delivery. If your team is working towards common goals without any misconception then only their efforts would be fruitful.

3. Transitioning from Monolithic Architecture to Microservices Infrastructure

One of the biggest challenges you could face with DevOps is migrating from traditional and monolithic frameworks to microservices. It is not just a drastic change, it's a huge step towards innovation.

Solution:

Although DevOps practices look fun, you have to continuously innovate and frankly, that can be tedious work.

To resolve this issue, you need to have a working knowledge of the foundation, continuous delivery practices, and configuration management to adapt the amplified functional responsibility from microservices which is mandatory to solve this DevOps challenge.

4. Over-training

The best thing about DevOps is that it comes with innovative features. Although they are easy to work with, your team has to go through a proper training process first for their effective implementation.

The more the new tools arrive in the market, the more your team will be spending time in training instead of doing the actual work. And if you do not train your employees on the new innovative tools then your company might just get left behind.

Moreover, you have to teach your employees to handle all the new tools while adhering to the existing design and security measures.

Solution:

Training for every shiny new tool with advanced features in the market can be, well, challenging. What you can do is have a structure in place that allows you and your DevOps teams to pick a suitable tool for the project.

So, instead of fixating on the innovative tools from the market, you have to shift your focus on fulfilling your project requirements. For that, pick suitable tools and if necessary train your team on just those tools during the project.

5. Adherence

Adhering to the DevOps practices is a difficult task. For everyone in the company from stakeholders to your team members, the transition should be seamless and efficient.

Solution:

To ensure that everyone on your team adheres to DevOps implementation, you have to make them aware of the benefits of DevOps and how handling various aspects of DevOps like microservices would help them learn skills and technologies that are the future of software development. You have to show them that along with stakeholders, DevOps is also beneficial for developers.

6. Coordination between both teams

When two teams work in collaboration, conflicts are bound to happen. You have to find a way to make sure that both development and operations teams work in sync.

Solution:

Clear communication is the key to successful collaboration. And for that, a proper communication channel must be established.

The goals of the respective teams must be conveyed clearly and for that, necessary tools must be allocated too. That ought to take the extra workload off their shoulders and work in sync effortlessly.

7. Embracing new trends

Previously we talked about how employees would waste their time if they tried to learn all the tools available in the market. However, there is another challenge even if you just want to train them for the necessary tools of the project, you will find that a few people will be reluctant to come out of their comfort zone to embrace the new tools and technologies.

Solution:

As we discussed the solution for the first challenge, similarly, continuous learning and adapting new skills will help professionals grow their expertise and stay relevant to the rapidly changing IT industry and its market demands.

8. Deployment and Release Cycles

For any work, a lack of accountability of people can create some serious problems. In DevOps, it is the mismanagement in deployment and product releases, that no one wants to hold accountable for.

Solution:

The best way to handle this problem is to first be closely associated with development and operations teams and then carry out divided liability for all the tasks of the projects including deployment and product release cycle. In this way, both of your teams will have balanced responsibilities.

9. Key Metrics

One of the biggest concerns regarding DevOps is that there are fewer reliable sources from where you can find data that can help amp up your understanding of the product. This leads to the issue with the key metrics.

Solution:

Collecting and handling data can be a daunting task but it can be achieved using DORA metrics. it allows the teams to easily consume and handle the necessary data.

10. Implementing Test Automation Strategy

In DevOps, there is a lot of significance in automated tests. It is claimed to hold a key position in DevOps practices.

Solution:

To successfully implement the automation test strategy for DevOps, you have to come up with an effective execution strategy across big channels. You must also have a good idea about how you can reduce the time to conduct and showcase your products in the market quickly.

11. Security Issues

You have to ensure that your digital products do not have any security issues because cyberattacks are on the rise. Therefore, you don't want to leave any security vulnerabilities in your DevOps pipeline as it can compromise sensitive information regarding your business or customers.

Solutions:

• Don't add too much sensitive information to your source code or code base. Also if there is any sensitive information in your code that makes it vulnerable then address it using code analysis tools.
• Employ an effective monitoring tool to detect and resolve cyber threats.
• If you notice any irregularities in any part of the pipeline then immediately lock down those parts.

12. Monitoring the overall DevOps process

Monitoring the entire DevOps can be a big headache. Because there are too many functional variables and each has different metrics to measure their effectiveness.

For example, the effectiveness of a CI/CD process is measured with metrics like deployment frequency and code branches. Meanwhile, the Defect Escape Rate is an inherent part of the continuous testing pipeline.

With so many moving variables, the DevOps process lacks clear visibility. This leads to delays in production and finger-pointing after that. Even if you employ manual processes to predict such issues, you not only have to put in tremendous labor but it also stands the risk of human errors which further causes incorrect updates.

Solutions:

A lot of continuous monitoring tools are available in the market. You pick a suitable tool that can provide a continuous overview of network components, services, metrics, and applications.

You need a monitoring tool that can give you a bird's eye view of the infrastructure to detect critical issues. You can use its altering services to resolve these issues. This offers a great deal of flexibility and scalability. A good monitoring tool will also render updated logs on DevOps systems outages, code crashes, failures, and other events.

Such an updated viewport helps the DevOps teams to know what went wrong and where. So that they can immediately work on making necessary changes.

We have discussed the most common challenges a company might face while adopting DevOps practices. This list is short, there are many more kinds of DevOps challenges you can come across during your journey. It all depends on the scope of your project and your approach to DevOps adaptation.

Therefore, it is highly recommended that in addition to having basic DevOps knowledge, you must have experienced personnel on board who can successfully guide you through the storms of DevOps implementations.