If you’ve followed our previous content on Unified Commerce, then you are aware of the iterative model of continuous innovation in the context of retail digital transformation. In part one of this blog series, we’ve explored the relationship of DevOps to the retail digital transformation ecosystem and the 4D approach to it. If you’re in the retail industry, trying to get a start with unifying experiences, this is definitely one area to pay close attention to.

Continuing from where we left, we want to now address how these 4 dimensions need defined parameters for withstanding the continuous accelerated development releases we will be putting them through.

4D DevOps – Parameters

 

Let’s expand on these parameters –

  1. Distribution – As one of the most physical pieces of DevOps, it needs you to evaluate how your teams and end customers are located. Teams across various time-zones are apt candidates for embracing DevOps and can transition their work with an effective model. This is also true for a diversified customer base, as a good DevOps model can accelerate as well as enable you to branch your releases for different geographies.
  2. Technology – as we spoke about in the previous part, the right technology and tool stack plays a major role in the success of your DevOps plan. You can’t drink juice with a knife and fork. Jenkins, Ansible, Puppet, etc., the market is full with products that can help on the journey but like any other journey choosing the right vehicle is required. Determining which tools to adopt should require a robust compatibility check- based on the Infrastructure and development needs.
  3. Scale and load – Your DevOps strategy needs to know how many environments require a continuous deployment, and whether the monitoring tools put in place can handle the load your new release will put them to. Scaling your application will also require knowledge on what performance expectations are required for an automated QA and the release will have to be strategically paced through DevOps so as to not burden the systems at one shot.
  4. Environment and security –Your application hosting (cloud, on-prem) affects how your DevOps tech and tools are selected and how the release automation will work as both will have different level of control and abilities. This includes rollback mechanism, security protocols, downtime planning, etc.
  5. Release – a successful DevOps strategy will need to know the release frequency, to effectively automate the same. It would need an insight into the approval workflow, reviews and bug reporting and of course the cost associated with each release, making it a critical parameter for each of the dimensions in your DevOps strategy.

 

After we have successfully identified the parameters, we are now closer to defining the customized template for your DevOps strategy. Your template will be reflecting something like below (identified the tools, processes and control mechanisms to fit into the above template)

 

The next in line is the actual implementation of the template. We will be talking about story management, branching, CICD and what do post build at a high level in the continuation of this series.

In the next part we will walk you through a bit more on development and release cycle processes with relevant mentions of what development and operations teams go through in their daily routines. Stay tuned!

Recommended Blogs

1. Role of Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery in transforming DevOps

2. Challenges of CICD implementation and its impact on your business

3. Adopting the Right DevOps Strategy to Lead Your Unified Commerce Journey-Part 1

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