A Rundown of DevOps Trends: Adapting to the New Normal and Predictions for 2021

If nothing else, 2020 was a year full of change. The world was forced to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic, which set a new course for the way individuals and businesses function. As the year progressed, organizations increasingly relied on technology service providers to help them stay afloat in the new make-or-break business climate.

Within the IT industry, it’s no surprise that DevOps has continued to gain momentum during the pandemic. DevOps blends people, process, and tools to help transform and innovate efficiently and effectively — the perfect set of practices for the new influx of IT customers.

We asked our leading DevOps experts how their teams are adapting to the new normal, and what their predictions are for the future. Continue reading for insights from our engineering team, some of which were recently featured in DevOps Digest.

Rapid Digitalization is One of DevOps Major Trends. Here’s How DevOps Teams are Adapting to the New Normal

Aliaksandr Liakh | DevOps Software Engineer

During the pandemic, all our communication moved online. Our daily meetings are held on Zoom, and we usually turn our cameras on so we can see teammates’ real-time reactions and discuss our project issues more effectively. The number of daily emails also grew significantly. To better manage an influx of email, configure your mail client to sort the inbox according to specified rules.

We’ve started to use a stricter flow in Jira. For example, pre-pandemic we rarely set a ticket’s status to “In Progress;” we just told to each other verbally. Now we make sure to note the “In Progress” status to avoid doing the same ticket simultaneously.

Fun Sprint Retrospectives ( https://funretro.io) helped us to increase our team engagement and run retrospectives. It’s really useful and easy to use for defining areas of focus, merging similar points, prioritizing, voting, sorting by number of votes and so on.

Bondarev Sergey | Director of Engineering

COVID created a new wave of interest in collaboration tools including existing ones like Google Documents and Slides and new tools like miro.com. These online collaboration tools help make it feel like you are still collaborating in the same room as your teammates.

All meetings also went virtual. As a result, we had to become more organized around booking meetings and sending invitations. Calendars between teammates are now shared for full visibility. However, it’s important to create some separation between personal and work life, so consider scheduling time for lunch and coffee.

The DevOps Industry Trends to Watch for in 2021

Aliaksandr Liakh | DevOps Software Engineer

“Everything as Code” will be the evolution of the as-code paradigm. The Infrastructure as Code approach has proved itself well. This coming year will see it expand in other DevOps areas. The as-code way of working enables organizations to benefit from shortened release cycles. These are more predictable and have less delivery risk, which will boost business agility, responsiveness, and innovation.
Originally featured in DevOps Digest: https://www.devopsdigest.com/2021-devops-predictions-5

Aliaksandr Liakh | DevOps Software Engineer

AI will make its way across all areas of DevOps activity. DevOps automation produces more builds, more frequently, and with a lot of information. That’s the perfect environment for AI and machine learning to play a role. The more data is fed to AI algorithms, the better they detect patterns, make predictions, and act on them to keep the CI/CD pipeline running smoothly. Most significantly, AI can produce intelligent automation about your DevOps process itself from the volumes of logs and performance flow data. AI will help DevOps engineers improve CI/CD pipelines while avoiding mistakes that break builds and will even help predict faults.
Originally featured in DevOps Digest: https://www.devopsdigest.com/2021-devops-predictions-1

We’re looking forward to what 2021 has in store for the industry! Have a great holiday season and Happy New Year!

Learn more about Exadel’s DevOps Services and how we can help you stay ahead of the DevOps trends in 2021: https://exadel.com/services/digital-transformation/devops/

Originally published at https://exadel.com on January 19, 2021.