How to Select a Best DevOps Service Provider
At the turn of the previous century, General Motors and other automakers constructed enormous plants equipped with the machinery and forges necessary to melt steel. Everything required to manufacture a vehicle and get it out the door was on-site.
While you may have an innovative product similar to those of General Motors in the past, times have changed, and you no longer need to do everything yourself. DevOps as a service enables your engineers to concentrate on the essential aspect—your product—rather than the infrastructure.
Implementing the DevOps process remains a challenge for many firms worldwide attempting to leverage corporate DevOps to provide software and critical upgrades to their consumers. You must choose a top-tier supplier with tested CI/CD methods and a high level of automation, allowing you to focus completely on building and growing your product.
DevOps as a service is offered by many businesses and organizations in the current dynamic IT environment. Therefore, how can you determine which provider works for you and differentiate the excellent ones from the rest? Is it simply a matter of technical expertise and familiarity with DevOps best practices? It is a blend of technical skills, DevOps expertise, and basic consulting abilities. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind while searching for a DevOps service provider.
Read more: Top 10 DevOps Trends to Watch 2024
They Must Display Empathy
When meeting with a potential provider for the first time, ensure that they are attentively listening to what you have to say. They must understand the problem statement.
A reputable DevOps service provider will request your input on whether they have appropriately identified all the issues. The keyword in this instance is empathy. They must be able to put themselves in your position. If they were the client, they would want their service provider to reiterate the issue description before discussing the DevOps metrics.
Many DevOps service providers will act intuitively, particularly the more seasoned ones. They have been there and will be eager to provide potential solutions and DevOps KPIs to monitor to achieve the goals. Therefore, if the potential service provider interjects their opinion about release and deployment management or any other topic while you are presenting the problem, this should serve as an early red flag.
Additionally, if you invited them on-site and requested them to identify inefficient processes, they should spend a minimum of one week at your business to uncover wasteful practices. If users spend too little time on the website, they will quickly adopt a solution to enjoy all of the benefits of continuous integration. For instance, they might discover a difficulty midway through implementing this method that could have been identified and avoided from the beginning.
In addition to asking about their technical capabilities, experience, and general DevOps intelligence, ensure that they demonstrate empathy and approach the work systematically.
They Must Have an Open Mind
DevOps is sometimes referred to as “Agile Delivery” because of the tight relationship between DevOps and Agile. Extrapolating from this, many people believe that DevOps implementation is something only Agile teams can perform.
While most experts agree that you can fully leverage the DevOps approach within Agile teams, your organization may be using the Waterfall model for valid reasons. If this is the case, DevOps consultants must be able to provide solutions that can be executed immediately to deliver quick wins. For instance, this may involve reducing the build and deployment time from hours to minutes. Such a target might be considered modest by the DevOps support service provider, but it could relieve a great deal of pressure on your team and give them the time they need to identify additional areas to optimize. If you discover that you are adopting certain fundamental Agile practices during the improvement process, you should consider committing to this change.
However, the DevOps provider should not make Agile processes a prerequisite for deploying DevOps solutions.
They Must Possess the Required Experience
You should engage a DevOps service provider with at least five years of experience with automation technologies such as Puppet, Ansible, Chef, and SaltStack, as well as a high level of proficiency with Python, Ruby, PHP, and Java. Additionally, they should be familiar with continuous integration platforms like Jenkins, CruiseControl, and CruiseControl.NET, among others. Experience in code delivery, database administration, system design, and software architecture will also be highly beneficial.
When interviewing candidates, inquire whether they hold certifications in project management, risk management, or as a Scrum Master, or at least have experience in these areas. The location of the DevOps support service provider is less important; the candidate who best meets your needs may not be in the same city, state, or country.
The DevOps consultant will need to visit your site to observe and analyze processes and offer recommendations for improvements. Nowadays, travel between locations can be done reasonably and within budget constraints.
While the DevOps service provider does not necessarily need experience in your specific industry, they should understand that the business requirements of your firm and technical advancements must align. All actions must adhere to strong business standards. Be sure to address all desired business outcomes from the DevOps implementation before considering any procedural changes.
Although the requirements for a DevOps consultant are high, the expectations for your engineers are equally stringent. They must have significant automation skills, be capable of designing and managing a software stack, and possess project-specific expertise in tools like Docker, Chef, Puppet, Jenkins, and MongoDB. Similar to DevOps consultants, engineers must also have strong soft skills, including empathy, communication, honesty, and a continuous drive for learning and skill enhancement.
Read more: Top 10 Essential Skills for DevOps Engineers
Encourage a Warm Atmosphere
There is so much material available on Agile and its methodology that the human aspect can be overlooked. If team members do not get along, problems will arise regardless of the methods employed. The DevOps service provider must be capable of assembling a team that understands and supports one another.
The service provider should set the right example to build such a team. They should occasionally plan team lunches, encourage daily stand-up meetings, and communicate with team members to address their concerns. A collection of unresponsive, unfeeling individuals does not constitute a true team.
In my experience, a product team leader did not attend stand-up meetings due to “higher priority” tasks. As you can guess, this created significant dissatisfaction among the team members, as these meetings are ineffective if the team leader is absent.
Therefore, the service provider must understand how to foster and shape a genuine team that shares common goals and values.
Watch Out for Flaunters
If you conduct a simple Google search for “DevOps continuous integration tools” or any other tool, you will encounter an avalanche of results. Almost every DevOps consulting firm has worked with or provides these solutions, and each DevOps solution provider has its preferred tools.
Ultimately, they try to embed their preferred technologies into every client’s system in whatever manner possible. They may also attempt to impress you or boost your ego by listing these tools and rambling about their features.
In most cases, clients lack technical expertise and are seeking a solution to a business problem. If a prospective service provider begins reciting a list of tools or using technical jargon during the interview, this is a clue that the relationship may not work out.
We recommend identifying a process you wish to optimize and discussing this with the prospective service provider. For instance, if you are trying to improve a build process and they start discussing shifting the application to the cloud, dismantling a monolithic architecture, and using numerous tools, this might be a red flag.
This does not mean they should avoid offering insights on optimizing inefficient procedures; however, they should present their suggestions gradually. They should start with a problem statement, ask if you are ready to consider some steps into the future, and, if you agree, then proceed with more significant changes.
In reality, the hallmark of a successful consultant is someone who can explain everything in a language that is easy to understand.
Patience is a Virtue
Establishing an Agile mindset and embracing corporate DevOps in a team accustomed to traditional methods takes time. It is unlikely to occur within two or three months due to the need to change mental processes and work routines. The team shouldn’t resist this change, as it will only foster negativity and resentment.
A reputable service provider will sit down with you to discuss your expectations. When creating the statement of work with the provider, they must account for the fact that patience will be required and that things may not go as smoothly as anticipated. In many cases, it might take months to adopt an open-source technology that they consider straightforward. Ask the service provider about the impact of this change on DevOps security. What will the change management processes look like? Who will serve as the business and technical owners?
Not many DevOps consulting organizations prioritize security from the outset, even though security is an integral part of the DevOps process.
In the past, security was the responsibility of a separate team towards the end of the development process. When the development cycle extended for months or even years, this was less of an issue, but those days are long gone.
A competent DevOps outsourcing provider will include security teams from the outset and develop a roadmap for security automation. This involves establishing risk tolerance and performing a risk/benefit analysis to identify appropriate security measures for a specific application. DevSecOps, like the standard DevOps method, necessitates the automation of repetitive tasks due to the time-consuming nature of manual security checks within the pipeline.
Ensure They Are Current with the Most Recent Technologies
Many DevOps consultants tend to work on a project for an extended period and, as a result, become bogged down with mundane deliverables. They may prioritize these deliverables over familiarizing themselves with new technologies to maintain market relevance. They must understand that, despite having recently spent many years working on a single project, they need to switch gears and focus on something completely unrelated, as their previous work becomes irrelevant.
Did they engage in self-education to stay up-to-date with the latest technologies on the market? If the answer is “no,” this is a negative indicator.
Most DevOps solution providers work with several clients, which can make it easy for them to criticize your company’s procedures. Typically, the more experience a service provider has, the more likely they are to adopt a judgmental attitude.
A professional DevOps service provider will strive to avoid this mentality and will seek to understand the underlying reasons for your existing procedures. Instead of simply pointing out flaws, they should ask why these practices are in place. For instance, if your build time is two and a half hours, they should investigate the issue and find a solution rather than criticizing you for it. Perhaps you’re using an outdated ANT script, or there might be another issue.
The bottom line is that they should not be judgmental from the outset. They must familiarize themselves with your processes before offering feedback, determining why you are using them, and proposing improvements.
They Must Be Professional
Although it may seem obvious, establishing and maintaining professional ethics is crucial.
Consider that you are bringing in someone whom your team members will look up to as a role model. You will place a great deal of trust in them, delegate responsibility, and expect them to be a leader who provides creative solutions.
Everyone will be watching and will have high expectations. They must convey a sense of trust and authority through their appearance, demeanor, and conduct.
Concluding Remarks
The DevOps service provider you select must apply DevOps best practices to address your challenges effectively.
Do not hire a DevOps supplier who views DevOps workflows as merely automating routine cloud infrastructure tasks. They are capable of much more. They must embrace the entirety of the DevOps culture.
Everyone is familiar with the available tools and technology, so focus on their consulting abilities. This includes interpersonal skills, teaching team members, organizing teams, and maintaining professionalism. These qualities distinguish the best consultants from the rest.
Read more: How to Select a Best DevOps Service Provider