Management of projects is an essential element of any big-scale business undertaking, and it requires careful planning, allocation of resources, and coordination among multiple stakeholders to ensure that the final product is on time and within budget.
DevOps is an approach to software development that extends agile development principles by integrating the IT team’s development and operations units into one homogenous unit. This integration enables a more seamless flow between the traditionally siloed sides of the software development lifecycle.
It leads to fewer defects in production because operating requirements were considered from the project’s outset.
In this blog, we will look at the distinctions between DevOps and the management of projects and how they can be merged to gain more benefit, the best practices in DevOps managing projects, and the tools you can utilize to implement this method in your business.
Let’s begin by describing the distinctions between these two fields and dispelling a popular misconception.
DevOps Vs.Project Management
Given the fluid nature of DevOps and its continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) process, the methodology may seem at odds with project management strategies that tend to follow timelines with a set start and endpoint. These methods are more in line with the traditional software delivery methods, such as the waterfall model.
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However, the project management style can be adapted to meet the specifics of the DevOps process. It is crucial to move the focus away from the single final product and instead modify the timeline to consider the agile method of incremental delivery at the end of every sprint.
Let’s take a closer look to see how DevOps and the management of projects work together.
What exactly is DevOps Project Management?
DevOps Project management can be described as a combination of the two disciplines, where project management is customized to and supports a DevOps model. In the DevOps project management model, project managers act as coordinators for many contributors and keep track of dependencies and timelines.
But, project managers must closely align with the DevOps team and possess knowledge regarding the creation process and abilities required to develop the final product. There are a variety of best methods that project managers must use to make this happen in and within the DevOps pipeline.
DevOps Project Management Best Practices
These are the best practices to assist project managers with traditional backgrounds in adopting what they learn from the DevOps model.
Accept the MVP Mentality.
In the field of software development, the MVP is the minimum viable product (MVP) can be described as the most basic version of a program that can still satisfy the primary specifications that the program has.
DevOps adheres to the concept of MVP as a method to ensure a product can always be delivered at the end of every sprint without causing delays due to an excessively broad scope.
Contrary to traditional methods of managing projects which emphasize the end product as a monolithic entity, it is a significant change. DevOps is seen less as a linear process, with fixed dates for the start and end of each month in favor of a continual process of continuous improvement.
The benefits of an MVP approach are that the customers get a product faster, and their feedback can help the team make corrections earlier in the process. If they don’t, the team could present the final product using the waterfall method only to find that they aren’t completely satisfied with the customer’s needs, which means the process needs to be re-initiated.
Concentrate on On-time and Quality Delivery.
Project management puts an enormous focus on completing deadlines. Although this is crucial many of the measures used by teams working on DevOps to gauge success are more qualitative indicators to determine whether the client has met their objectives by using the app.
It means that fast turnaround times are crucial. It is also important to allocate the right amount of time and resources needed to guarantee that the quality of the product is at the highest standards. Project managers must consider these two aspects when deciding on the purpose of the sprint and assigning tasks.
One of the most important aspects of a proper delegating responsibility is knowing the interdependencies of each job.
Emphasize Dependencies.
Even in a system that employs a microservice method of creating small-scale applications that handle specific tasks, there are interdependencies among these applications, the system they operate on, the data they manage, and much more.
Tracking dependencies goes beyond configuration management. It is essential to keep a clear view of every moving part of the IT environment and the DevOps team’s responsibility to determine the sprint goals.
Each deliverable should work in the current environment and be ready to go live after every DevOps cycle. If the delivery is hindered due to a backlog of work or a system requirement that is not being fulfilled, Then more detailed monitoring of dependencies is required.
Utilize Tools To Perform All The Lifting.
Automatization is one of the main goals in DevOps to maximize the impact of a team’s work, and DevOps managing projects is no different. Tools for managing projects provide one source of truth to determine how the work was assigned and completed, which project aspects are going, and what challenges have been encountered throughout the process.
This data is important to the entire team to give a better understanding and help make better-informed decisions.
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Ideally, these apps can integrate with the DevOps team’s tools to perform their day-to-day tasks so that project managers and designers are all on the same team. Dashboards provide real-time information about how the team meets its objectives and assist project managers in identifying possible issues that need to be addressed earlier in the process.
Regarding tools, let’s look at some possibilities to implement DevOps methods of managing projects in your company.
Tools For DevOps Management Projects
Here are five of the most popular DevOps tools for managing projects.
Jira
Cost: Free with paid plans.
Jira is an issue and project management tracking platform developed by Atlassian designed to meet the requirements of teams working in software. It allows project managers and team members to work together as they organize, track the progress of projects, release them, and then report on the outcomes of every sprint.
Jira integrates with the other components of the Atlassian products, such as Bitbucket, Confluence, Pipelines, and other tools for developers to gain greater insights and features.
ClickUp
Cost: Free with paid plans.
ClickUp is a single productivity system designed to streamline your tasks and oversee each step of the process of development.
Teams of all sizes and across different industries rely on the growing number of fully customizable and collaborative tools to produce top-quality items on time and within budget. With more than 15 different ways to look at your projects and a scalable hierarchy, ClickUp provides more flexibility than the typical project management software.
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This flexibility makes it the perfect tool for your team of developers, regardless of whether it follows Scrum, Kanban, XP, or another framework. Additionally, it is compatible with over a thousand other tools for work to simplify your workflow even more.
Azure Boards
Cost: Free with paid plans.
Azure Boards is a project management tool integrated with the Azure DevOps suite to cover the complete DevOps lifecycle, including Pipelines, Repos, and Test Plans.
Azure Boards has Kanban boards, team dashboards, and customized reporting that track each stage of development. Furthermore, it has advanced analytics that ensures you are always aware of the progress of your development.
The software also offers built-in and customized workflows to ensure that you can record each task.
AWS DevOps
Price: Free with paid plans.
AWS DevOps is a comprehensive set of tools that can be used to manage pipelines and create software on the same platform.
This software-based project-management solution is part of the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing category. The included tools CodePipeline, CodBuild, CodeDeploy, and CodeStar support the complete DevOps process and can be used in the cloud and locally on machines.
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Furthermore, AWS Marketplace provides access to various other tools to improve development and project management capabilities.
GitLab
Price: Free with paid plans.
GitLab is a software specifically designed to support the entire DevOps lifecycle, focusing on coordinating and assigning tasks to team members and organizing projects. GitLab utilizes issues to keep track of tasks and milestones.
It also uses labels and iterations to organize these issues and make coordinating easier. Additionally, GitLab provides visualizations that allow users to see the progress made toward targets and integrates with merge requests for code to connect issues and milestones with the developers’ work in real time.
Asana
Price: Free with paid plans.
Asana is an application for managing projects designed to streamline and simplify the process of recording tasks and activities across the team. It provides multiple perspectives of work, including boards and timelines, which provide the information needed to prioritize tasks.
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With the help of templates, forms, and guidelines, project managers can create approvals and tailor workflows according to the team’s needs. Asana is compatible With over 200 other productivity software tools like GitHub and GitLab.
For a comprehensive overview of the tools, your company must implement to create the DevOps pipeline that goes beyond project management, take a look at our complete checklist of DevOps tools.
DevOps Project Management Results in More Effective Outcomes.
Combining the principles of DevOps with the principles of project management, you can achieve better coordination between the individual members of your team and the bigger objectives for the entire sprint.
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This results in better results because you ensure that task scopes are established, and dependencies are monitored to ensure the application is ready for deployment.
Project management tools for DevOps simplify the process and increase communication between project managers and team members, ensuring that all are on the same wavelength and working towards the same objectives.
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