Automation can reshape the DevOps process, says Lloyds

DevOps is no longer the sole preserve of startups

In a fast-moving industry, companies must maintain a rapid pace of change to stay ahead of the competition and deliver on their promises in a timely fashion. DevOps, the combination of the development and operations divisions of a business that enables continuous development of tools and processes, is the increasingly popular an answer to this challenge.

Lloyds Banking Group was a winner at Computing's recent DevOps Excellence Awards, taking home three gongs. Terry Marsh, Chief Engineer of Core Platforms at the firm, said, "Being recognised by peers in the industry is something the team is very proud of. This recognition reinforces the great work that has been achieved to date and has assisted the team to promote interest around the business to invest in our pace of change while improving the quality of delivery."

Appropriately for an area of IT that emphasises innovation, Marsh says that DevOps itself is changing rapidly, and continuous development methodologies are no longer limited to start-ups: as Lloyds' wins demonstrate, large organisations are investing heavily in the space.

"The number of developers that are aware [of] and able to use the tooling is increasing every day and has reached a point where these practices have become mainstream. Large institutions will be able to apply these patterns across their organisations at an increasing pace to improve efficiency and respond to market and regulatory demands."

Lloyds' use of automation - widely seen as a key enabler for DevOps - was recognised at the Awards. Marsh said, "[Having] automated testing in place can ensure that the quality of change continuously meets a high standard and can be repeated quickly. The automated release processes enables the right versions of code to be deployed and assists in managing dependencies between applications."

Lloyds' next move in DevOps automation will see it making use of containerisation by "[exploiting] cloud and packaging software into standardised units for development, shipment and deployment." Marsh doesn't recommend starting there for a firm new to DevOps, though. Instead, he says that it is important to find the most troublesome area of your own business first:

"Don't try everything at once; this is a multi-year activity! Find that piece of the jigsaw that is causing the most pain, and fix it. This will show teams that you are serious about making change and help to get some ‘runs on the board'. This will bring credibility to your efforts and set you in good stead for the next improvements."