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General

There’s been a great debate on social media and online forums about stress in the IT sector.
Per usual, various factions emerged, each saying their job was the most stressful. As fascinating as such discussions are, they bring little value to understanding who is the most stressed, how often, and why.
That’s why we went a step further and surveyed IT and non-IT professionals to understand the big picture and dive into the details.
We paid close attention to DevOps because they are closest to our hearts. Also, some strong voices suggested that DevOps is arguably one of the most stressful areas in the IT world.
Read on to learn more about stress levels in the IT sector versus the rest of the world.
We asked 1,142 respondents to tell us:
<ul>
<li>How often they felt stressed at work</li>
<li>What they regarded as top stressors</li>
<li>What symptoms they experienced most often</li>
<li>How they coped with work-related stress</li>
</ul>
Here’s what we learned.

key-findings-stress-in-it

Key Findings - Stress in IT

<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">IT professionals are significantly less stressed than the general population. 34% of them feel constantly or frequently stressed by their work, and this is 20% points less than the non-IT sector. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Women working in the IT sector experience much less stress than those in non-IT jobs (35% vs. 53%).</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Around 31% of employees in the entire IT sector missed a workday because of stress.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The most stressed IT area is Data Science &amp; Machine Learning, which is 16.16% points more than the average in the IT sector. The least stressed are IT Project Management &amp; Business Analytics.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">DevOps engineers are more frequently stressed than the IT average. Over 40% of them admit to being stressed “often” or “very often” compared to 34% of the IT average.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Heavy workload is the top stressor at work, with an average of 51% of all respondents identifying it as such. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Over 39% of DevOps engineers admit that work-related stress impacts their personal lives. This is the highest percentage in all segments we surveyed, with the others ranging between 21% (other IT) and 12% (non-IT).</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">DevOps are also the most stressed because of insufficient skills to do their jobs (13% of them compared to 8% among IT average and 9% non-IT).</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Irritability has been pointed out as the most common stress symptom among IT professionals, especially DevOps (55% of them selected this answer). For non-IT professionals #1 stress symptom is depression.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Listening to music is the most common way of coping with stress for both IT and non-IT professionals (73% and 66%).</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">However, for DevOps, playing video games is the most popular stress coping mechanism, ranking at 62%. Over 45% of IT said the same.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Almost 60% of DevOps choose to blame themselves as a way to deal with stress. No other group was revealed to be as self-critical. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The IT sector doesn&#8217;t work weekends and is less interested in changing jobs. 66% of DevOps and 52% of IT never or rarely work on the weekends, whereas only about 25% of non-IT could say the same. 39% of DevOps and 43% of IT would never or rarely consider changing their jobs (with only 25% of non-IT). </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">DevOps are also the ones who take off the most time. And those who don’t take any time off are on average 35% more frequently stressed than their IT counterparts.</li>
</ul>

Our survey revealed that DevOps engineers are more frequently stressed than any other group of IT professionals.
Interestingly, the entire IT sector comes across as less stressed than non-IT, where the number of those admitted to feeling stressed often or very often at the level of 55% (compared to 34% for all IT).

who-is-the-most-frequently-stressed-stress-in-it-report

Who is the most frequently stressed - stress in IT report

Over 40% of the surveyed DevOps admit to being stressed often or very often. Out of all the IT professionals, 34% admit the same. For non-DevOps IT, the number is about 33%.
The most stressed IT area is Data Science &amp; Machine Learning, with 50% of the surveyed feeling stressed often or very often.
DevOps is the second most stressed IT area. The least stressed are IT Project Management &amp; Business Analytics.

what-is-the-most-stressed-it-area-report

What is the most stressed IT area report

In addition, stress levels are substantially lower for women in the IT sector (35%) than those in non-IT jobs (53%).
The question that arises is what factors contribute to DevOps feeling stressed more frequently.

First, the number of people who have no degree and work in DevOps is higher than in other IT jobs (27% vs. 20% respectively), and they’re 10% more likely to feel stressed. Which means, higher education may reduce the likelihood of feeling stressed in many IT-related professions.

what-is-your-level-of-education-stress-in-it-report

What is your level of education - stress in IT report

Second, there are about 7.5% fewer individuals with graduate degrees in DevOps than other IT professionals. But those who do hold a graduate degree and work as DevOps are the most frequently stressed of all the groups we surveyed, with a stress level score of 3.44 out of 5. Interestingly, those working in the IT sector (excluding DevOps) are the least stressed group (3.04 out of 5).

average-stress-frequency-for-employees-with-a-graduate-degree

Average stress frequency for employees with a graduate degree

In terms of salaries themselves, DevOps engineers are more content than the IT average, with as many as 75% of respondents being satisfied (or neutral) with how much they earn (vs. 71% among all IT). Interestingly, a higher percentage of people in the non-IT sector compared to IT and DevOps admitted that they are satisfied with their salaries (50% vs. 43%).

are-you-satisfied-with-your-current-salary-stress-in-it-report

Are you satisfied with your current salary - stress in IT report

Furthermore, the least earning DevOps engineers (under USD 100k) are on average 7% more frequently stressed than least earning other IT professionals. Therefore, it seems like one of the quickest ways to reduce the frequency of stress among DevOps is to ensure they get paid fairly.

average-stress-frequency-by-salary-levels-stress-in-it

Average stress frequency by salary levels

Among our respondents, DevOps engineers took the lead in delivering what was expected of them in the previous month. As high as 65% admitted that they never or rarely had problems with their tasks. In comparison, about 34% of non-IT and 61% of all IT respondents said the same thing.

how-often-were-you-unable-to-cope-stress-in-it-report

How often were you unable to cope - stress in IT report

Suggesting that DevOps is arguably one of the best organized IT areas and DevOps engineers seem to have the most flexibility in managing their workload. Our survey shows that up to 86% of DevOps engineers are free to decide when to take a break during the day. The same is true for about 80% of all IT professionals, and 77% of non-IT professionals.

can-you-decide-when-to-take-a-break-stress-in-it-report

Can you decide when to take a break - stress in IT report

A similar trend was visible in another question we asked—about having to work on the weekends.
As many as 66% of DevOps engineers admitted they never or rarely work on the weekends. This starkly contrasts with the non-IT sector, where only about 25% of respondents can fully enjoy their Saturdays and Sundays. Among the other IT (non-DevOps) professionals, only 48% admit this is the case, and 52% of all IT professionals.

how-often-do-you-work-overtime-stress-in-it-report

How often do you work overtime - stress in IT report

However, DevOps managers turn out to be one of the most stressed professional groups in the IT sector.
They are, on average, 14% more frequently stressed than DevOps specialists, which appears normal as the levels of stress increase with growing responsibilities.
But what’s really interesting is that DevOps managers are also 21% more frequently stressed than managers working in the other IT areas.

average-stress-frequency-for-managers-and-specialists

Average stress frequency for managers and specialists

It may be hard to identify the exact reasons, but it appears like the level of control over their work has nothing to do with it.
As much as 33% of DevOps admitted that in the last month, they “rarely or never” felt that they were on top of things. It&#8217;s a high number because only 26% of IT and 15% of non-IT claimed the same.

how-often-were-you-on-top-of-things-stress-in-it-report

How often were you on top of things- stress in IT report

Additionally, our analysis shows that those DevOps who admitted not being on top of things were on average 20% more frequently stressed than their IT counterparts. Interestingly, those DevOps who claimed to have full control over their duties were also, on average, 20% more frequently stressed than the rest of IT.
In other words, regardless of whether or not they feel on top of things at work, DevOps are more stressed than others anyway.

In the workplace like DevOps, SRE, or Cloud engineering, we work a lot with critical systems that are usually required by the business to be highly available, running all the time, and never go down. So when something goes wrong, everyone expects you to fix things as soon as possible, and that makes you feel really stressed. &#8211; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ioannis-moustakis/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Ioannis Moustakis</a>, DevOps &amp; Site Reliability Engineer
The biggest stress is knowing a DevOps process is going to affect hundreds or thousands of servers. Also, becoming an expert with multiple DevOps tools can be cumbersome and overwhelming at times which leads to stress. &#8211; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradsimonin/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Brad Simonin</a>, Senior Engineer at ConocoPhillips Company
DevOps is very stressful. When things go wrong, you&#8217;re on the hook to get a resolution quickly. Every minute of downtime is lost revenue. &#8211; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-delcogliano-b264022/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Paul Delcogliano</a>, VP of Technology at IPX Retirement
DevOps can also appear to be more sensitive to stress regarding how they perceive their work&#8217;s value.

job-worth-doing-stress-in-it-report

Job worth doing - stress in IT report

DevOps who feel their job is not worth doing (0 on a 0–5 scale) are 18% more frequently stressed than other IT professionals who feel likewise.
A similar trend is visible in the context of a career change—
With higher salaries, little work on the weekends, and job flexibility, it’s hardly surprising that a high percentage of DevOps engineers would never or rarely consider changing their jobs (39%). For the entire IT sector, this number is even higher (43%).
In contrast, the number of those who share this view in the non-IT sectors is only around 26%.
These DevOps who don’t consider changing their careers are 54% more often stressed than their IT counterparts.

how-often-do-you-think-about-changing-your-job-stress-in-it-report

How often do you think about changing your job - stress in IT report

For starters, we found that about 31% of those working in the entire IT sector missed a workday because of stress. Interestingly, according to the American Institute of Stress, stress causes around 1M US workers to miss work every day.
Now, it’s common knowledge that one of the best ways of dealing with stress is taking time off to recharge the batteries. In fact, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, proved that a resort vacation boosts your energy levels and positively impacts “molecular networks associated with stress and immune function.”
Knowing that DevOps is a more frequently stressed group than other IT pros, it came as no surprise to us to learn DevOps are also the ones who take the most time off. About 72% of DevOps take at least 9 days off per year, which is 16% points more than the IT workers and 37% points more than those employed in the non-IT sectors.

vacation-days-taken-stress-in-it-report

Vacation days taken - stress in IT report

Futhermore, DevOps take on average 14.2 days off, which is 37% more than the other IT workers.

average-number-of-days-off-in-the-past-year-stress-in-it-report

Average number of days off in the past year - stress in IT report

DevOps professionals who don’t take any time off are 35% more frequently stressed than their IT counterparts.
Even though DevOps engineers are more frequently stressed than their IT counterparts, they are the least likely to skip a workday due to stress, with over 70% admitting they’ve never done this.
In the non-IT sectors, about 55% of those surveyed skipped a day of work because of stress, 32% for IT non-DevOps, and 31% for the entire IT sector.

miss-a-workday-because-of-stress-stress-in-it-report

Miss a workday because of stress - stress in IT report

APA’s 2020 study identifies the following as the top stressors:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Low salary (56%)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Long hours (54%)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">No opportunity for growth (52%)</li>
</ul>
On the other hand, the American Institute of Stress lists these as top causes of workplace stress:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Workload (46%)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">People issues (28%)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Juggling work and personal lives (20%)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Lack of job security (6%)</li>
</ul>
According to our respondents, the top three workplace stressors are:
Non-IT:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Heavy workload: 52%</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Long hours: 36%</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Tight deadlines: 30%</li>
</ul>
IT:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Heavy workload: 50%</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Tight deadlines: 32%</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Long hours: 28%</li>
</ul>
DevOps:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Heavy workload: 42%</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Work interfering with personal or family time: 39%</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Tight deadlines: 36%</li>
</ul>
Even though it may sound obvious, the heavy workload has been universally identified as the top stressor by all the groups we surveyed. In fact, this finding lines up with Statista’s study from 2017 and reveals that not much has changed over the past five years.

top-workplace-stressors-stress-in-it-report

Top workplace stressors - stress in IT report

stress-causes-stress-in-it-report

Stress causes - stress in IT report

Interestingly, DevOps stood out as a group for whom the number two stressor was “work interfering with personal or family time” (39%), which for all the others appeared much lower on the list. This may suggest that DevOps are more family-oriented than other groups.
In terms of stress symptoms, DevOps also differed from the other groups we surveyed. 
The most common stress symptom for the surveyed IT professionals is irritability. 55% of DevOps noted irritability as the #1 stress symptom (44% of all IT did the same). However, for non-IT professionals, the #1 stress symptom is depression (44%).
When you look at the overall results, DevOps come across as 16% more irritated but 18% less depressed than non-IT professionals.
There was one more interesting thing we noticed, of all the groups, DevOps are the most stressed about having insufficient skills to do the job (about 13%), which resonates with our other finding that this group has the smallest percentage of workers with a degree.
Namely, DevOps engineers pointed out insufficient skills to do the job as a stress-generating factor more than any other group we surveyed.
Insufficient skills to do the job as a stressor
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">DevOps: 13%</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">IT: 8%</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">IT non-DevOps: 7%</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Non-IT: 9%</li>
</ul>
Here’s what the numbers look like for the same symptoms among the participants in our study:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Irritability: DevOps (55%), IT (44%), non-IT (39%)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Mood swings: DevOps (42%), IT (32%), non-IT (24%)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Anxiety attacks: DevOps (33%), non-IT (29%), IT (28%)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Depression: DevOps (26%), IT (22%), non-IT (44%)</li>
</ul>

most-common-negative-symptoms-of-stress-stress-in-it-report

Most common negative symptoms of stress - stress in IT report

stress-symptoms-stress-in-it-report

Stress symptoms - stress in IT report

Overall, DevOps engineers accounted for the largest percentage in four out of eleven stress symptoms.
This may result from the fact that IT and DevOps engineers combined create the largest professional group that wouldn’t feel safe reporting stress issues to their employers, 45% of IT and 44% of DevOps. For the non-IT sector, the number is only 26%.

reporting-stress-issuess-stress-in-it-report

Reporting stress issuess - stress in IT report

DevOps engineers are also the largest group whose members don’t know whether or not their organizations provide mental health support (29%). Plus, the smallest percentage of this professional group works in companies that do provide such programs (37%).
To put this into perspective, about 20% of respondents from IT and 6% from non-IT sectors didn’t know if their organizations provided mental health support to their employees, and 43% to 61%, respectively, worked in companies that do provide it.

is-your-workplace-providing-mental-health-support-stress-in-it-report

Is your workplace providing mental health support - stress in IT report

How do DevOps cope with stress?
Interestingly, they’re the most self-critical group, with almost 60% of them criticizing themselves to relieve stress, which is more than 20% of other surveyed groups.
I feel that DevOps is supposed to be some kind of senior role, providing guidance, and helping others. So, in the end, when you fail, it is painful because you were supposed to be helping others, not failing them. I think that&#8217;s why people might choose to blame themselves as a negative way of dealing with stress. &#8211; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ioannis-moustakis/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Ioannis Moustakis</a>, DevOps &amp; Site Reliability Engineer
What’s worth noting is that the most popular negative way of coping with stress for all groups is excessive eating or not eating enough.
DevOps professionals are also the most solitary group as they avoid friends and family (as a coping strategy) over 20% more often than other IT professionals.

negative-ways-of-dealing-with-stress-stress-in-it-report

Negative ways of dealing with stress - stress in IT report

In terms of the so-called positive ways of dealing with stress, DevOps also differ from the other groups.
While the most popular way to cope with stress across the IT and non-IT sectors is listening to music and exercising, as many as 62% of DevOps choose to play video games as the #1 stress-relieving activity. 
In addition, DevOps enjoy exercising and getting outdoors at least 19% points more than other groups. Moreover, DevOps laugh or cry at least 7% points less frequently than others as a way to cope with stress.

positive-ways-of-copying-with-stress-stress-in-it-report

Positive ways of copying with stress - stress in IT report

My way of dealing with stress at work is to define objectives and goals as it helps me stay focused on achieving them rather than getting digressed by minor details. Another way is to introduce a healthy lifestyle and keep a positivity induced mindset, that requires one to be very empathetic towards others. &#8211; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliabbasjaffri/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Ali Abbas Jaffri</a>, Machine Learning Engineer at ML Reply
I found having hobbies unrelated to IT necessary to reduce work-related stress. For example, I ride a bike and travel and often go hiking &#8211; a change of scenery helps a lot. What&#8217;s more, understanding that there are many external factors and inevitable incidents related to those factors that you can&#8217;t influence is crucial to keep the mind at ease. &#8211; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirill-kotov-a35465aa/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Kirill Kotov</a>, Head of Integration and Automation Department at <a href="https://asaplab.io/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">ASAP Lab LTD</a>

IT professionals experience workplace stress much less than people working in other sectors. The primary stressors in the IT industry include heavy workload and tight deadlines; the most common symptoms are irritability and mood swings. Some of the best ways of coping with job-related stress are listening to music, playing video games, and exercising.
The DevOps area appears to be the 2nd most frequently stressed out group within the IT industry. With the highest percentage of people holding no degree, doubting their skills, and criticizing themselves, DevOps also come across as arguably one of the least happy groups of IT professionals.
That said, DevOps are the only ones surveyed who put “heavy workload” almost on a par with “work interfering with personal or family time” as the main source of work-related stress, which suggests that they’re family-oriented people.
&nbsp;
<h3>Methodology</h3>
Regarding the stress study, we collected answers from 1,142 respondents from the United States. The survey was conducted online via Centiment, Reddit, and Amazon mTurk.
Respondents consisted of 57% males and 43% females. The survey comprised 29 questions—mostly based on the Likert scale and multiple-choice.
<h3>Fair Use Statement</h3>
If our study helped you understand the subject of stress in the workplace, you can share the insights and numbers we’ve arrived at. Please, don’t fail to mention where the information comes from and provide a link to this page. Thank you.

Spacelift is an alternative to using homegrown solutions on top of a generic CI. It helps overcome common state management issues and adds several must-have capabilities s for infrastructure management.

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Is workplace stress a thing in the IT sector? How do stress levels of IT pros compare to non-IT people? Are DevOps engineers the most stressed?

92-stress-in-it

Stress in IT

IT’s Stressful. Ask DevOps. Stress in the IT Sector [2022 Survey]

In this article, we’re going to take a closer look at a very important part of the DevOps pipeline: security.
Because of how important security is to DevOps pipelines, many have taken to calling it DevSecOps instead. What exactly is it, and how can you properly implement it in your organization? Let’s take a look.
Table of contents:
<ol>
<li><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/what-is-devsecops#what-is-devsecops" rel="">What is DevSecOps?</a></li>
<li><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/what-is-devsecops#advantages-of-devsecops">Advantages of DevSecOps</a></li>
<li><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/what-is-devsecops#organizational-culture" rel="">Organizational Culture</a></li>
<li><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/what-is-devsecops#the-devsecops-lifecycle">The DevSecOps Lifecycle</a></li>
<li><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/what-is-devsecops#implementing-the-proper-tools-and-processes">Implementing the Proper Tools and Processes</a></li>
</ol>

The point of DevOps is to increase your team’s productivity by breaking down silos between development teams and operations teams.
The point of DevSecOps, therefore, is to implement security best practices while still maintaining increased team productivity by breaking down silos between teams.
This is important because most people view security as an annoyance and as something that adds extra friction to the development and deployment process. Instead of accepting that and putting security on the back burner, DevSecOps brings security back to the forefront by saying “you know what, security is critical and must be part of our process, so let’s make it fit in as painlessly as possible.”
<h3>Shift-left security</h3>
To make security more impactful without adding much friction, we need to include it from the very beginning. The traditional approach has been to plan, develop, and push changes forward. Only then would a security team become involved. 
There are many issues with this approach.
One issue is that the security team will not have access to most of the context. Lack of context results in questions like these being asked without an easy way to gather answers and typically way too late in the process:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Why is this being developed the way that it is?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Who made that decision?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Are they aware it will have an impact on other parts of the system?</li>
</ul>
Another issue is that when the security team finds problems, the pipeline has to go all the way back to the beginning. That causes delays and frustration, especially if the development or infrastructure team has already moved on to another task.
Instead, with DevSecOps, we want to include security from the very beginning so that problems are found as early in the process as possible: closest to the decision makers and to the context.
One way we can do this is by including security team members during planning and then again during product demonstrations in between each development interval. This helps threefold:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">It helps the security team understand business goals for the implementation</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">It involves a team that will be impacted during the development instead of after</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The security team can provide guidance and feedback as features get created</li>
</ol>
This approach provides security expertise earlier in the development process and reduces the amount of time before issues get discovered.
Another way we can do this is by tracking open security issues in the same tracking systems that development and operations teams use. The traditional approach has been to keep security issues in separate tracking systems, which means Dev and Ops don’t have visibility (and vice versa). By having all open issues (from Dev, Sec, and Ops) in a central location, everyone can see what the priorities are, and they can collaborate.
If we envision our pipeline going from left to right — left being the starting point and right being production — by moving security at the very beginning, we are shifting security left. That’s why this is often referred to as a “shift-left” security strategy.

devsecops-shift-left

shift left devsecops

Ask any developer, infrastructure engineer, or security engineer, whether they’d prefer someone to find issues with their code, infrastructure, etc… while they’re still working on it versus after they’ve pushed it through and moved on to another task and the answer will be the same: show me issues as early as possible so that I can quickly fix them and move on to something else.
It’s much easier and less painful to fix issues while the project is fresh on your mind than after you’ve already switched to a different context. It’s much more efficient.
Let’s take a closer look at how those efficiencies can benefit the organization and team.

The reason that security is so important to include from day one is that it will help:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Reduce risk and legal liability</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Identify bugs and vulnerabilities earlier in the process</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Make security more manageable</li>
</ul>

devsecops-reducing-risk-2

reducing risk devsecops

<h3>Reducing risk and legal liability</h3>
When it comes to reducing risk and legal liability, we’re not just talking about getting sued by shareholders or customers when there’s a costly breach. We’re also talking about being in compliance with the law.
Depending on your business, you may have to comply with GDPR law depending on certain situations. Or, you may have to handle health-related records, which means you may need to comply with HIPAA or other important laws.
If you don’t comply, it could cost your organization a massive amount of money in fees.
Having the proper tools and processes in place can help prevent modifications from going out that would result in violations.
It can also help identify compliance violations as the features get created by the development or infrastructure teams instead of right before we’re trying to deploy them to production.
<h3>Identifying bugs and vulnerabilities early in the process</h3>
It’s important for issues that can cause vulnerabilities to be caught as early as possible in the DevOps pipeline.
The reason is that the further into the pipeline you are, the more expensive it is (in both monetary and time requirement terms) to fix issues.
With the traditional DevOps process, code or infrastructure changes are committed and pushed to the next phase. The QA team and automated tools receive those changes and start testing, and everyone crosses their fingers that no major issues are found so that everything can get deployed to production on time in order to meet a deadline.

devsecops-autmated-testing

automated testing devsecops

Except that more often than not, the QA team or automated testing will find problems. Not just cosmetic problems but potentially major security issues that require costly re-writes.
Now, all of a sudden, the issues are sent back to the development or infrastructure teams, and they need to be fixed as soon as possible because they’re holding up a release. Those teams are under massive pressure to deliver a solution. Once they submit a solution, the QA and security tests start over again.

devsecops-security

security devsecops

Security becomes a source of pain and anxiety, and when stakeholders ask why a project is delayed, they’re told that it’s because the security team found issues.
Instead, if you shift security left and include it earlier in the process, it becomes integrated into the development process rather than being an add-on further down. Those otherwise costly security issues get discovered much faster and closer to the developer or infrastructure engineer so that they can address those issues before moving on to another task.
Our goal is to give Dev and Ops fast feedback on the work they are producing so that they can be notified right away and can address the issue before moving on to another task and switching contexts.
<h3>Making security more manageable</h3>
An added benefit of shifting security left is that it helps make security tasks more manageable in a way that can feel completely natural to development teams.
Enabling IT teams to deliver value faster is not a new concept…development has had very similar problems. How has development fixed it? By going agile and by breaking down large projects into the smallest tasks possible.

devsecops-managable-security

devsecops managable security

Security should be handled in the same way. Instead of keeping huge security tests or projects, we need to take those and break them down into really small tests or projects that happen continuously throughout the DevOps pipeline. Being reactive to changes halfway down our deployment pipeline makes this very difficult. Being proactive to changes at the very beginning enables us to be agile.
<h3>How do we achieve these benefits?</h3>
The way that we achieve these benefits is by getting management buy-in, making security part of everyone’s responsibilities, and by implementing the proper tools and processes.
Let’s talk more about what that means and what it looks like.

<h3>Management buy-in</h3>
Properly implementing DevSecOps is a fundamental shift in how your organization thinks about, builds, and deploys software and infrastructure. Doing that requires far more than just your peers agreeing to make a change…it requires management buy-in.
Software vulnerabilities being exploited in production results in risks for the organization. The person who judges risks vs. revenue needs to see the value in implementing DevSecOps, or else it all falls flat.
We want to build a mindset that everyone is responsible for security. That sounds cliché, but it’s true, and it is practical, not just conceptual. For good security decisions to be made at speed and scale, they simply can’t be centralized.
If you want to see this properly implemented, you need management to not only back it up but also implement it themselves.
<h3>Security is everyone’s responsibility</h3>
DevSecOps makes security part of the development process instead of lobbing it over the fence to a security team and forgetting about it.
Instead of hearing, “I don’t usually worry about vulnerabilities in my code or config files because the security team will take care of it” we want to empower the development and infrastructure teams to write more secure code and configurations.
Of course, security is a profession, and we do need highly skilled people in security-focused roles, but we also need everyone else to be responsible for securing their work instead of lobbing it over the fence and saying, “not my problem.”
Again, achieving this requires management buy-in and measuring the right metrics.
<h3>Security and DevSecOps training</h3>
Getting organizational culture right is critical, but it’s not going to happen overnight. Unless you’re already implementing a lot of these concepts, it’s going to require a fundamental shift. There will be resistance, and it will initially cause frustration because you’re changing people’s traditional ways of thinking and working.
Of course, management buy-in will help alleviate these issues, but so will proper training. Not only does management need to understand these concepts (even if at a high level), but so does everyone else (at a more practical level).
Once everyone understands the DevSecOps approach, they’ll not only understand why it’s important, but they’ll also see how to properly implement it and how it will end up helping them do their jobs more efficiently.

As mentioned before, DevSecOps doesn’t have just one right way of implementing it. With that said, visual learners may find it helpful to visualize the lifecycle.

devsecops-lifecycle-2

devsecops lifecycle

As we can see, a lot of verifications should happen before we even reach the test or release stages of the lifecycle…or in other words, on the left.
When we’re in the planning phase, which is where all projects start, we should be looking at:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Providing secure code training</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Creating baselines</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Creating threat models</li>
</ul>
Then, when developers start writing application code or when infrastructure engineers start configuring cloud resources to support those applications, we should be using:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Source code versioning</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Code reviews</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Local secrets scanning</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Linting</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Static Application Security Testing (SAST)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Software Composition Analysis (SCA)</li>
</ul>
The code then moves on to the build stage, where we should be using:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Centralized SCA and SAST (instead of local only)</li>
</ul>
After that, we have the testing stage which should include:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Centralized secrets scanning</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Vulnerability assessments</li>
</ul>
We could even include penetration tests in this stage depending on the size of the organization.
In the release stage, we can run:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Compliance checks</li>
</ul>
Then, in the deploy stage, we’ll want to:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Implement code signing</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Harden endpoints</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Harden applications</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Encrypt everything that needs to be</li>
</ul>
Once changes are in production, we’re not done. We need to implement:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Centralized logging</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Process for patching</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Vulnerability disclosure</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Vulnerability assessments</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Penetration Tests</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Bug bounty programs</li>
</ul>
All of that feeds into monitoring where we should implement:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Access monitoring</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">IPS/IDS and WAF solutions</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">SIEM</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Attack surface mapping</li>
</ul>
All of that helps us learn and improve, which we can then use the next time we start a new project, which takes us all the way back to the planning phase.
Another common way of visualizing and calling this process is <a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/ci-cd-pipeline" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CI/CD</a>, or Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment.

devsecops-cicd

devsecops cicd

Continuous Integration helps us move through the Plan, Code, Build, Test, and Release stages. 
Continuous Delivery helps us move through the Deploy, Operate, and Monitor stages so that a member of the team can then press a button to smoothly deploy all of the changes to production. 
Continuous Deployment is the same as Continuous Delivery, except it aims to completely automate deployment without even requiring manual intervention. Getting to this point requires a serious amount of trust in your pipeline and is a great goal to strive towards.

Getting organizational buy-in and detecting security issues as early in the pipeline as possible sounds great and all, but also much easier said than done. Plus, there’s not just one right way of achieving DevSecOps. Every organization is different in the way that they build and deploy. With that said, there are concepts that can be applied across the board.
We’ve barely scratched the surface as you could see from the graphic above. Each stage has a number of actions, processes, and tools we can (and should) implement depending on our needs.

Now that we understand what DevSecOps aims to achieve, why it’s advantageous, and what it looks like, we need to explore how to properly implement processes and tools to achieve it in our organization. This will be covered in the next article of our DevSecOps series.
Be sure to check back soon for the rest of this series! Better yet, subscribe to our newsletter so that we can notify you when the latest articles get released.
In the meantime, go ahead and share this article with your colleagues so they can start learning about DevSecOps, and learn how a platform like <a href="https://docs.spacelift.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Spacelift</a> can help you and your organization fully manage cloud resources within minutes. Spacelift is a CI/CD platform for infrastructure-as-code that supports tools like Terraform, Pulumi, Kubernetes, and more. For example, it enables policy-as-code, which lets you define policies and rules that govern your infrastructure automatically. You can even invite your security and compliance teams to collaborate on and approve certain workflows and policies for parts that require a more manual approach.
While we will cover concepts like these in the rest of our DevSecOps series, get a head start with <a href="https://docs.spacelift.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Spacelift’s documentation</a>.

5 Most Useful CI/CD Tools for DevOps in 2022

SRE vs. DevOps: What’s the Difference Between Them?

Learn what DevSecOps is and what it aims to achieve. Take a closer look at a very important part of the DevOps pipeline: security.

99-devsecops-making-security-central-to-your-devops-pipeline

What is DevSecOps

DevSecOps: Making Security Central To Your DevOps Pipeline

Policy as Code has been a very hot topic recently. It allows you to codify your rules and decision-making to execute them in an automated way. This lets products expose a programmatic, composable language for policies instead of having to build very complex purpose-specific UIs with all options available. One of the most &#8211; if not the most &#8211; popular Policy as Code engines is <a href="https://www.openpolicyagent.org" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Open Policy Agent</a>, used in many projects, like Kubernetes and Envoy, and also extensively used in Spacelift. It’s open source and uses the Rego language for policy authoring.
Rego, however, is a language that works very differently than most and can be quite unintuitive at first glance. It’s actually more similar to SQL than to common imperative languages like Python. This means that the learning curve can be quite steep. Moreover, copy-paste development will very often not help you understand Rego &#8211; and authoring complicated policies &#8211; better. 
This is precisely why I wrote this article. It’s meant to guide you through some of the fundamental constructs and mechanisms of Rego, especially those that we’ve seen used a lot in the wild so that you can get a better intuitive understanding of how it all fits together and how to author larger, more advanced, policies. This is not aiming to be a complete (or even sizeable) reference, nor is it a Spacelift-specific guide. If you want to go along and play with the examples, the <a href="https://play.openpolicyagent.org" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Open Policy Agent playground</a> is the best place to do so.

When talking about Rego, I think it’s best to start with decisions. Decisions in Rego are used as the output of policies but also as temporary variables all over the place. They don’t have to be true/false either &#8211; which is one of the common misconceptions! Decisions can be strings, arrays, objects, sets, etc. You can have as many decisions in your policy as you want.
For example, you can have a simple boolean decision with a constant,

or reference a different variable.

So basically normal variable (decision) assignment.
Rego also allows you to use block notation for assignments:

where each line can be an assignment or true/false expression. The result of the whole block will be true only if the expression in each line evaluates to true, letting you build complex rules that use many other decisions and variables inside of them. We can check a bunch of predicates, and only if all checks succeed does the decision come out to be true.
You can also have a decision that’s an OR of two other decisions, like here:

As you can see, a block for a decision can be repeated multiple times, and the decision will be true if any of the blocks evaluate to true.

The above block is very simple and linear, but we can also do something slightly more complicated. Let’s say we have a request path and an array <code>allowed_path_prefixes</code> and want to check if the path matches any prefix. In that case, we can specify an additional variable for the index:

Now, the way this will intuitively work is that rego will choose an <code>i</code>, move to the second line, and if it fails, go back, try another <code>i</code> and so on until it finds an <code>i</code> that leads to all lines being true. If no such <code>i</code> is found, then <code>allow</code> will be <code>null</code> (technically speaking, it will be undefined).
In human terms, you can read this as “set allow to true if, for some value of i, the request path starts with the i’th allowed path prefix,” or, in even more human terms, “set allow to true if the request path starts with any of the allowed path prefixes.”
If you have more such variables, you can add them separated by commas next to the <code>i</code>:

Additionally, if this <code>i</code> is only needed in a single place, like in the above example, you can substitute it with an underscore instead:

We can also take a look at an example that’s closer to Spacelift, where we might want to decide if a commit is worth a Terraform execution or whether it should just be ignored. We get a list of files changed by the commit, and we also have a couple of paths that are of interest to Terraform. Here we’ll check if any of the paths changed starts with one of the interesting paths:

We’re using two underscores in a single line to mean “is there any pair of (affected file, interesting path prefix) such that the file starts with the prefix.”
But wait, there’s no <code>allow</code> rule here? Is that a valid policy? Yes, it is! Policies can have arbitrary sets of decisions, with those decision being of arbitrary types. It’s just that <code>allow</code> based policies are one of the most obvious use cases, but the power of the Rego language extends much further and can be used for all kinds of decisions, as exemplified by the <a href="https://docs.spacelift.io/concepts/policy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rich selection of policies available in Spacelift</a>.

Decisions can also be specified as sets:

which means “Papaya should be in the allow set if it belongs to the allowed_users list.”
Moreover, with this block notation, you can specify the element as a variable reference from the block itself:

Using just a single block, you can even specify multiple elements of the set, by having multiple evaluation paths that successfully reach the end of the block and each path having a different user variable.

The value in the square brackets can actually be an arbitrary expression referencing the block’s variables, so if we have a policy whose decisions are warnings based on resources changed, we could do the following:

which checks for forbidden resources and displays a pretty warning message if one of them is changed. In this example, you can also see the usage of a set containment check in the last line of the block.

A more advanced feature of rego is that it lets you define custom functions you can use as helpers in your policy. Writing functions is very similar to writing block decisions, but with some minor differences:

You can see we’re specifying a list of arguments, the variable that should be used as the output, and then have a normal block body. The output of the function will be c as long as the function successfully reaches the end of its body.
However, instead of that output variable, we could also, again, have an arbitrary expression, a constant, for instance:

In this case, the function will evaluate to true if the bucket is not public and is encrypted.

All of this has just been a quick overview of the parts of Rego we’ve seen most commonly used. With these building blocks, you should be much better equipped to begin authoring your own policies, whichever project you’re using them with. If you want to learn more, the whole Rego policy language is much bigger, and the best place to dive in is the <a href="https://www.openpolicyagent.org/docs/latest/policy-language/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Official Open Policy Agent Policy Language documentation</a>.
If you think Rego is cool and would like to play with a product where it’s put front-and-center, we’d love you to take <a href="https://spacelift.io/?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=text&amp;utm_id=blogpost&amp;utm_content=%7Bopen_policy_agent_rego%7D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Spacelift</a> for a spin!

Spacelift is a flexible orchestration solution for IaC development. It delivers enhanced collaboration, automation and controls to simplify and accelerate the provisioning of cloud based infrastructures.

Open Policy Agent: What Is OPA and How It Works (Examples)

Spacelift in the GitHub Marketplace

A quick overview of the most commonly used parts of the OPA Rego policy language. Learn how to begin authoring your own policies.

114-rego

Open Policy Agent Rego

Introduction to Open Policy Agent (OPA) Rego Language

Automation is the fuel that propels the world forward today. Irrespective of all the challenges, it has proved to be beneficial for any ecosystem. We have witnessed this for centuries &#8211; almost all technological revolutions that have happened have automation as a consistent attribute.
DevOps is a term coined a few years back. However, the efforts to automate the transport of workloads and updated software in production have been carried out for decades. The term DevOps is an acknowledgment from the industry, which has given rise to the whole slew of tools that have become part of the DevOps toolchain.
In my opinion, DevOps can be defined as one of the disciplines of automation that assures reliable delivery of software products and services in today’s ever-growing complex world. In this post, we take a look at some of the most useful DevOps tools that define the state of today’s software CI/CD automation:
<ol>
<li><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/ci-cd-tools#1-azure-devops" rel="">Azure DevOps</a></li>
<li><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/ci-cd-tools#2-docker" rel="">Docker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/ci-cd-tools#3-github-actions" rel=""> GitHub Actions</a></li>
<li><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/ci-cd-tools#4-terraform">Terraform</a></li>
<li><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/ci-cd-tools#5-spacelift">Spacelift</a></li>
</ol>
Note: The tools mentioned in the following sections are in alphabetical order and not in any order of preference.

<a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/devops/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Azure DevOps</a> by Microsoft is an all-in-one CI/CD platform that features entire software delivery in one place. As the name suggests, it is more than just a CI/CD tool. Below are some of its features.
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Azure Repos &#8211; It is a cloud-hosted private Git repository service. Azure Repos enables team collaboration by providing features like branching, tagging, pull requests, etc., which are essential.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Azure Boards &#8211; Epics and stories that are created in a backlog and made part of the sprints required for agile software delivery are supported by Azure Boards. Azure Boards make it possible to coordinate team efforts. The stories have (sub) tasks that are linked to the relevant commit in Azure Repos. This enables traceability across the development and management planes.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Azure Pipelines &#8211; Azure Pipelines enable the CI/CD automation of the software being developed. It can be integrated with any remote Git repository and not just Azure Repos. The extensions marketplace offers a number of pre-defined tasks which are reused along with custom tasks. The development of the CI/CD pipeline in Azure Pipelines follows an industry standard of YAML syntax.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Azure Artifacts &#8211; Software artifacts like binaries, packages, and files, often need secure storage and enforcement of the right access controls so that only the required automation workflows use these artifacts. The outputs generated by the build processes are usually stored in Azure Artifacts for quick, seamless, and secure access.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Azure Test Plans &#8211; Azure Test Plans offer a great set of tools to run tests on various combinations of host OS and browser suites, and enable end-to-end traceability of bugs. It provides a great UI to showcase indicators like test coverage. Test Plans truly help teams to deliver quality software with speed.</li>
</ul>
What makes Azure DevOps stand out is its ability to wrap all of the above in a single window. There are hardly any tools out there that encompass the end-to-end software development lifecycle automation like Azure DevOps.
The clean interface presented by Azure DevOps makes it easy to understand, navigate, and implement the CI/CD automation. It also boasts the release management functionality for systematic software releases &#8211; all integrated within Azure Pipelines. In the case of container images, it integrates well with Azure Container Repository (ACR) to push and pull images.
Similar to ACR, Azure Pipelines also integrates natively with other Azure cloud services for deployment. Service principals and managed identities provide a secure way to perform deployment activities from Azure DevOps.
Considering the fact that a good percentage of organizations use Microsoft products and Azure for their office work, using Azure DevOps is a natural choice for CI/CD automation in large teams.

There are many containerization tools available in the market, but Docker has stood the test of time. <a href="https://www.docker.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Docker</a> is used to build application images run in standalone mode on virtual machines or in a cluster as pods.
When an application source code is ready to be deployed or when new features are ready to be delivered, the first step is to containerize the application using Docker. The diagram below shows the general process of the same.

cicd-tools-docker

Docker’s architecture is mainly divided into three parts. First, the Docker CLI is used to interact with the Docker daemon, which is a process that builds, manages, and runs Docker images. The built images are stored in remote repositories, from where the CI/CD workflows fetch them for deployment purposes.
Finally, in the sub-prod and prod environments, these applications are run in the form of containers, which are instances of the images stored in repositories. The Docker engine is a term that represents the complete Docker core &#8211; that includes the CLI and Daemon and supports container runtime.
The Dockerfile contains the steps to build a container image that is understood by the Docker daemon. It usually starts with specifying the base image of the OS, certain configuration and patching tasks, and finally, the source code. 
If the compilation steps are required, they are specified as well. The application image thus created contains all the necessary runtime environment variables and OS requirements packaged together. A successfully built image can therefore be run on any machine that hosts a Docker engine.
The Docker engine also takes care of the resource management for each container. Resource limits can be managed in a way that not all resources offered by the host machine are consumed by a single running container. This makes it possible to run multiple instances of multiple applications on the same machine.
Docker helps package the application&#8217;s source code into an image that is reused in any environment. This ability offers great reliability in the overall software delivery process. Docker has made it possible to seamlessly package and ship products with speed.

Any source control system mainly has two parts &#8211; local Git to manage the code versions locally and remote repository to enable team collaboration. GitHub has been around for a long time and is a crucial part of the source code management systems available for free on the internet. It acts as a global remote repository for anyone who wants to develop in any language or framework. 
<a href="https://github.com/features/actions" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">GitHub Actions</a> is a CI/CD platform integrated within GitHub repositories and available for all the repositories one may have. Once the code is pushed or merged in a GitHub repo, the same event is used to trigger build and deploy pipelines. Similarly, there are ways to configure a mechanism to select specific events responsible for triggering the GitHub Actions pipeline.
All the pipelines are configured using YAML syntax, and they usually consist of jobs. Jobs, in turn, are executed via a series of steps. GitHub Actions are the steps included in jobs, which are a series of commands and instructions that perform a specific task. 
There is an ecosystem of pre-defined actions available to choose from in any GitHub Actions pipeline. These Action templates are provided by various vendors depending on their use cases. It is also possible to create and publish custom GitHub Actions to be used within the organization or published to the GitHub Marketplace so that other developers can take advantage of the same.
The jobs and steps included in any GitHub Action pipeline are executed on runner machines provided by Github. These are Github-managed compute resources. However, it is also possible to host private runners to run, build and deploy private applications.
Here is an example of a GitHub Action that initializes the Terraform code on the Runner system whenever some code is pushed to the main branch of the repo. Comments on each step explain the purpose for the given step.

Apart from the SCM and CI/CD (Actions) capabilities, Github also provides users with basic project management tools and secrets management features to manage secrets used in pipelines, issue tracking, and insights. Some of these features are spread across Github Team and Enterprise, where organization support is also provided.
Additionally, it is also possible to build GitHub Apps, which can integrate with the CI/CD process to enhance the process itself or fetch feedback from all the GitHub Actions tasks for reporting. 
GitHub is used by almost every developer on the planet, and it provides great capabilities. Starting out with GitHub Actions is very easy and leveraging it for automation workflows is valuable. It is one of the few resources available today for free that offers complete CI/CD capabilities and more.

Managing cloud infrastructure manually to host any product or service manually is tedious and risky. <a href="https://www.terraform.io/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Terraform</a> is an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool by Hashicorp that provides automation capabilities for infrastructure provisioning. Terraform uses HCL (Hashicorp Configuration Language) to express the infrastructure in the form of code and manage the end-to-end lifecycle of cloud resources.
Creating and managing infrastructure using code inherently leverages the advantages offered by programming practices and source code management systems. Similar to code, the infrastructure is also versioned, tracked, and rolled back. We can create and publish modules to create infrastructure to support reusability, thus improving the delivery velocity.
Terraform IaC syntax is declarative. Any infrastructure component developed in the form of code is created if it is not yet created. Dependencies are implicitly taken care of, while it is also possible to include explicit dependencies. We essentially express the desired state in Terraform configuration, and Terraform helps us provide the same.
The diagram below represents a typical workflow when managing infrastructure using Terraform. Developers develop the infrastructure using HCL on their local machine in files with extension .tf. The versions of these files are managed in remote git repositories.

cicd-tools-terraform

cicd tools terraform

To create the real-world resources using this Terraform code/configuration, it needs to be executed (apply command) on a Terraform host. A Terraform host is a machine where the Terraform binary is available that can interpret the configuration and call appropriate cloud provider APIs to create these resources.
Terraform maintains a state file that holds the mapping of real-world objects created to the configuration. If the configuration is changed and applied, the corresponding change is also reflected in the state file. Thus, the state file gains immense importance, and it is managed in a remote backend which is different than the Git repository as a best practice.
Since Terraform works with all the major cloud providers, it is cloud agnostic. The syntax used to develop infrastructure remains the same, however, the provider&#8217;s and module&#8217;s names may differ. The documentation on Terraform providers and modules is maintained at the Terraform Registry.
It is possible to build custom <a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/what-are-terraform-modules-and-how-do-they-work" target="_blank" rel="noopener">modules</a> and publish them to the public or private registry. Modules are also published on the remote SCM systems. Additionally, for private data centers, it is possible to create a custom provider that helps developers develop and deploy infrastructure components in the private data centers.
With cloud adoption being a major factor in any organization’s digital transformation journey, learning Terraform as a skill makes a lot of sense. Configuration management tools like Ansible have been around to manage the lifecycle of the applications. However, Terraform manages the lifecycle of the underlying resources via code &#8211; this enhances automation capabilities to newer heights.
Read more about <a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/terraform-in-ci-cd" target="_blank" rel="noopener">deploying your infrastructure in CI/CD using Terraform</a>.

When we talk about “developing” Infrastructure as Code, we have to acknowledge that the IaC was just the beginning. IaC tools like Terraform, Pulumi, AWS CloudFormation, etc. help us encode our infrastructure and leverage best practices from the programming paradigm. But, IaC alone is not enough to truly manage the infrastructure seamlessly.
<a href="https://spacelift.io/ci-cd-for-infrastructure" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Spacelift</a> provides a platform to manage IaC in an automated, easy, controlled, and secure manner. We touched upon remote backends in the last section. Spacelift goes above and beyond the support that is offered by the plain backend system. Spacelift is a sophisticated CI/CD platform for IaC that enables Gitops on infrastructure provisioning workflows.
Cloud infrastructure is prone to changes. There are many attributes that can be “tweaked” unknowingly. The reasons could be anything &#8211; human error, overlapping automation processes, 3rd party triggers, etc. The fact is that the infrastructure is prone to unwarranted change, and this can cause uncertainty in the way it is managed by IaC tools. This phenomenon is also known as <a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/drift-detection" target="_blank" rel="noopener">infrastructure drift</a>.
On the one hand, where we try to automate the lifecycle management of infrastructure, on the other hand, we also need an automated way to easily detect such configuration drifts. Spacelift features automatic discovery and remediation of infrastructure drift (<a href="https://docs.spacelift.io/concepts/stack/drift-detection" target="_blank" rel="noopener">drift detection feature</a>) and alerts the team with possible fixes.
We can define CI/CD flow for infrastructure on Spacelift, and it <a href="https://spacelift.io/integrations" target="_blank" rel="noopener">integrates</a> well with popular version control systems like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Azure DevOps. Thus, all the updates of the run triggered by pull requests are recorded and traceable to the responsible commit. It also implements an approval process to regulate the deployment process and avoid surprises.
Spacelift offers a great visual aid to see all the resources and flows in action. The intuitive UI helps quick understanding of the current state and provides actionable insights. Additionally, it also offers a view of cost estimates for the infrastructure being managed via Spacelift.

There are many tools in the DevOps ecosystem, and the ecosystem is constantly growing and improving. Till a few years back, tools like Jenkins dominated the market for automating workloads. With newer capabilities, the DevOps space is constantly evolving. The article covers some of the most relevant and essential tools today
However, it should be noted that automation and DevOps go beyond the tooling or the toolchain. It is more about adopting practices that are beneficial for software delivery in terms of quality, consistency, peace of mind, and costs. In the earlier days, it was often said that adopting DevOps is more about adopting a new mindset. Today, it is not just about adoption but the evolution of the mindset as allowed by the tools with cutting-edge capabilities.

Spacelift is an alternative to using homegrown solutions on top of a generic CI solution. It allows you to automate, audit, secure, and continuously deliver your infrastructure.

How to Deploy your Infrastructure in CI/CD using Terraform

5 Ways to Manage Terraform at Scale - Best Practices

Take a look at the list of the most useful CI/CD tools and learn about some of the popular tools that define the state of today’s software automation. 

38-ci-cd-tools

Most Useful CI/CD Tools

5 Most Useful CI/CD Tools for DevOps Engineers in 2022

Which cloud deployment model is right for your business?

In this article, we will discuss the different cloud deployment models, and look at how you can choose the best one for your business based on your requirements, as well as investigate the pros and cons of each model.

A cloud deployment model essentially defines where the infrastructure for your deployment resides and determines who has ownership and control over that infrastructure. It also determines the clouds nature and purpose.
Each organization will have its own requirements when making the shift or starting its journey to the cloud. In order to avoid costly and time-consuming bad decisions, it is critical to understand the organizational needs before embarking on the journey to the cloud. Making good decisions in the planning stage can help your business accelerate growth, help your business goals, and maintain competitiveness.
Most businesses in 2022 will already have some presence in the cloud, for example commonly utilizing a mix of SaaS (Software-as-a-service) offerings, such as Azure Active Directory, Office 365, Gmail, or IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-service) offerings, such as hosting infrastructure in Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS). Incorrect planning at the initial stages could put you at a disadvantage over your competitors who may be at a more mature stage in their cloud journey. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated business journeys to the cloud as workers connected to resources from home. During this process, different cloud deployment models had to be taken into account, with the speed of adoption commonly being the number one priority for many businesses.
The first port of call for any organization looking to adopt cloud services is to understand the available deployment models. Once these are understood, a better decision can be made about which routes the business should pursue. Each model will offer advantages and disadvantages in areas such as governance, scalability, security, flexibility, cost, and management.
Broadly deployment models can be split into 5 categories:
<ul class="">
<li id="605e" class="mq mr ip le b lf lv li lw kp ms kt mt kx mu lu mv mw mx my gt" data-selectable-paragraph=""><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/cloud-deployment-models#public-cloud" rel="">Public Cloud</a></li>
<li id="9e50" class="mq mr ip le b lf mz li na kp nb kt nc kx nd lu mv mw mx my gt" data-selectable-paragraph=""><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/cloud-deployment-models#private-cloud">Private Cloud</a></li>
<li id="0b1b" class="mq mr ip le b lf mz li na kp nb kt nc kx nd lu mv mw mx my gt" data-selectable-paragraph=""><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/cloud-deployment-models#hybrid-cloud">Hybrid Cloud</a></li>
<li id="fd1a" class="mq mr ip le b lf mz li na kp nb kt nc kx nd lu mv mw mx my gt" data-selectable-paragraph=""><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/cloud-deployment-models#multicloud">Multi-Cloud</a></li>
<li id="f3dc" class="mq mr ip le b lf mz li na kp nb kt nc kx nd lu mv mw mx my gt" data-selectable-paragraph=""><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/cloud-deployment-models#community-cloud">Community cloud</a></li>
</ul>
Let&#8217;s take a look at each model in more detail.

Public cloud is a commonly adopted cloud model, where the cloud services provider owns the infrastructure and openly provides access to it for the public to consume.
As the service provider owns the hardware and supporting networking infrastructure, it is under the service provider&#8217;s full control. The service provider is responsible for physical security, maintenance, and management of the data center where the infrastructure resides. The underlying infrastructure is therefore outside of the customer&#8217;s control and also away from the customer&#8217;s physical location.
The cloud service provider will share infrastructure between multiple customers, whilst keeping data separate and isolated, offering many layers of security controls where this is a concern. Some services can be hosted on dedicated or isolated hardware if required, usually at an additional cost. Cloud providers go to huge lengths to ensure physical datacenters are extremely secure and are highly regulated environments, almost always exceeding the standards a customer could achieve themselves.
Infrastructure is managed primarily using a web browser, but can also be manipulated using an API, on the command line, or using infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform.
Commonly used public clouds include Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud.

public-cloud-cloud-deployment-models

public cloud - cloud deployment models

<h3>Pros and cons</h3>
+ Low initial capital cost (Move from Capex to Opex)
+ High Flexibility
+ High (almost unlimited) scalability
+ High Reliability
+ Low maintenance costs
&#8211; Data security concerns for strictly regulated businesses

A private cloud can be thought of as an environment that is fully owned and managed by a single tenant. This option is usually chosen to alleviate any data security concerns that might exist with the public cloud offering. Any strict governance requirements can also be more easily adhered to and the private cloud can be more easily customized. Full control of the hardware can lead to higher performance. A customer will typically run a private cloud within their own building (on-premises) or purchase rackspace in a data center in which to host their infrastructure.
However, the responsibility to manage the infrastructure also falls to the customer creating a need for more staff with wider skills and increasing costs. A large initial investment may also be required to purchase the required hardware.
<h3>Pros and cons</h3>
+ Increased security and control
+ Dedicated hardware may improve performance
+ High flexibility
&#8211; High cost
&#8211; Higher management overheads

The hybrid model combines both public and private cloud deployment models giving a single cloud infrastructure that is aimed at increasing flexibility and deployment options for the business. For example, applications with strict governance and data security requirements may be hosted in the business private cloud, whereas applications without these concerns which need to be scaled on demand, could be hosted in the public cloud. Benefits of both the public and private cloud can be realized, as well as some of the disadvantages such as increased management overhead and the initial challenge of setting up a hybrid infrastructure. Once realized, applications can be moved between infrastructure hosted in the public and private clouds, increasing flexibility and fault tolerance.
Typically businesses may have some presence on-premise, and utilizing this hardware until it has reached end-of-life in the private cloud will likely be an attractive option if the business already owns the hardware. In the hybrid model, this can be used to form part of the private cloud. Most businesses strive to alleviate the burden on the existing infrastructure, migrating to the public cloud where possible, effectively utilizing the hybrid deployment model during the migration period.
<h3>Pros and cons</h3>
+ Improved scalability
+ High control
+ Highly scalable
+ High fault tolerance
+ Cost-effective
&#8211; Setup challenges
&#8211; High management overhead

The multi-cloud deployment model usually refers to the use of multiple public cloud providers to increase flexibility and fault tolerance, such as the use of Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud. The private cloud can also be thrown into the mix to give extra reliability and flexibility.
Some services may be preferred on a certain cloud over another after evaluation by the business. For example, the GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine) hosted on the Google Cloud may be preferable over similar offerings on Azure such as AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service), or Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service). Workloads can be distributed selectively. Adopting multiple clouds gives development teams a choice from a much wider pool of options, and can actually aid the developer workflow. Some comparable services may be cheaper than others and so may also be preferable in certain scenarios, for example, AWS could be used for production, and Google Cloud used for testing.
Multi-cloud is also commonly used by businesses with critical workloads, such as government agencies or financial corporations. Spreading data and infrastructure between multiple cloud providers can increase fault tolerance should one cloud platform encounter service outages. The benefits of the multi-cloud model can also be leveraged when a business forms a disaster recovery and business continuity plan.
However, with each option that is introduced, management becomes more complex and staff requires more skills to fully realize the benefits of a multi-cloud deployment model. Depending on the business objectives, multi-cloud has the potential to lower costs or raise them if increased fault tolerance is the goal. As with anything in I.T, the trade-off between the application requirements and the budget should be weighed up. Larger businesses further along the road in their cloud journey are usually suited to the multi-cloud model, as typically a business will adopt and single public cloud, and adopt another public cloud when the business requirements can be justified.
<h3>Pros and cons</h3>
+ Very high reliability
+ Very high flexibility
&#8211; Increased management complexity
&#8211; Increased staffing skills required
Learn more about <a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/multi-cloud-infrastructure-strategy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">multi-cloud benefits and best practices</a>.

A lesser-known and less adopted deployment model, a Community cloud brings together infrastructure that is shared and jointly accessed by several organizations from a specific group that shares specific computing needs. For example, the education sector could utilize a community cloud to enable a group of scholars and students to share academic content, making joint research easier.
<h3>Pros and cons</h3>
+ Sharing infrastructure lowers costs
&#8211; Reduced security
&#8211; Not applicable to most SMEs (Small to Medium enterprises)

Understanding the available cloud deployment models is key to positioning your business for success.
In the real world, new businesses and startups will commonly opt to fully adopt the public cloud where possible. Most existing businesses will have some existing infrastructure presence on-premise, and therefore bringing this into a private cloud and adopting the hybrid model may make more sense. Private cloud is a high-cost option with high overheads but is sometimes a requirement where data security regulation or concerns about data sovereignty are paramount. Multi-cloud can be considered where high reliability is a concern, such as in the financial industry.
And if you need an automation layer for your cloud resources, take a look at <a href="https://spacelift.io/?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=text&amp;utm_id=blogpost&amp;utm_content=%7Bcloud_deployment_models%7D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Spacelift’s self-service infrastructure</a>.

Business Benefits of Infrastructure as Code

What are the cloud deployment models? Learn the pros and cons of each model and take a look at how you can choose the best one for your business.

86-cloud-deployment-modules

Which Cloud Deployment Model Is Right for Your Business?

DevOps Best Practices (And How Not To Do DevOps)

Utilizing DevOps practices to maximize speed and value creation has been a hot topic in the software industry for the past decade. We have embraced these practices and changed how we work and think about development, operations, project management, code quality, observability, and continuous feedback. 
As organizations started applying these practices, we noticed many anti-patterns emerging. In this article, we will see some DevOps best practices and ways to improve our workflows, but also we will explore some of the typical DevOps anti-patterns and how to avoid them.

Probably you have seen hundreds of different definitions of DevOps by now. For me, DevOps is a set of best practices around the software development lifecycle and the effort to continually improve and deliver value more efficiently.  
On its basis, DevOps is a culture that spreads equally between developers and operations rather than a specific role. In reality, the term has been used as an umbrella term to characterize the engineering roles of cloud-savvy people who share the pains and responsibilities of devs and ops. At the same time, they strive to enable and promote DevOps practices within organizations. 
So why all this fuss? Implementing these practices has proven to improve software quality. Different software and operations teams collaborate more efficiently, reduce friction and lead time, integrate and test their code continuously, and deploy more often.
It&#8217;s all about finding the inefficiencies in our workflows and building a culture of continuous communication and trust. Other aspects of it are handling failures and unplanned work, leveraging automation, and focusing significantly on observability to get meaningful feedback.

Now that we set the foundation let&#8217;s explore some DevOps best practices without further ado. The list isn&#8217;t supposed to be exhaustive but rather a guide with hints and pointers that will ease your journey towards adopting a healthy DevOps culture. 
<h3>1. Foster a Culture of Collaboration and Blameless Communication</h3>
First and foremost, for this journey to be successful, we must focus intensely on growing a culture that allows people to collaborate freely and remove the fear of failure. Organizations and teams that promote values like trust and empathy tend to have a heads-up advantage in adopting DevOps practices. Break down the silos between teams and make them work together towards a common goal, bringing value to the company. One of the tools that deliver an <a href="https://spacelift.io/?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=text&amp;utm_id=blogpost&amp;utm_content=%7Bdevops_best_practices%7D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">enhanced collaboration layer for IaC</a><a href="https://spacelift.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> </a>is Spacelift. At Spacelift, you can invite security and compliance teams to collaborate on and approve workflows and policies.
<h3>2. Adopt Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD)</h3>
Integrating small batches of code frequently into a central code repository is a practice that allows developers to collaborate efficiently. With this approach, the repository is always kept in a good state since we introduce small changes that are easier to handle. Continuous Integration (CI) enables early error detection and improves code quality since these small batches of changes are validated each time with automated builds and tests. 
The next step after integrating our code is deploying it to our environment. Continuous Delivery (CD) is the practice of getting the code into a deployable state continuously for every small batch of change. This simplifies our deployments and provides our developers with an easy and automated method to push code to production.
<h3>3. Set up Automated Testing</h3>
A continuation of the previous point and an integral part of DevOps success is setting up and curating meaningful automated tests as part of our CI/CD pipelines. This way, we don&#8217;t rely on humans to run manual tests on our code; instead, we set up automated tests that run on every minor change introduced. 
By increasing the testing frequency and the number of tests, we reduce our chances of introducing bugs to production systems. The tests vary depending on the use case but typically could include unit testing, integration testing, end-to-end testing, load testing, smoke testing, etc. 
<h3>4. Focus on Observability and Find the Right Metrics</h3>
DevOps practices are based on getting feedback and continuously improving our processes. We need to find and track the right metrics to achieve that and measure our results. Figuring out the right metrics is an arduous journey that each organization has to go through. 
These metrics will differ from organization to organization and from team to team, depending on the goals and key results targeted. Still, it&#8217;s a crucial exercise for achieving success. Some typical examples of DevOps metrics are deployment time, frequency of deploys, deployment failure rate, availability of critical services, mean time to detect, mean time to restore, cost per unit, code coverage, and change lead time. 
Moving one step forward, we also have to focus on the observability of our apps and software running in production. We have to define a strategy for effectively storing, managing, and distributing logs, traces, and metrics of our applications to quickly solve issues, improve the understandability of our systems and enable our teams to operate efficiently. 
<h3>5. Avoid Manual Work with Automation</h3>
By reducing manual work and automating recurring tasks, we accelerate our processes and provide increased consistency to our results. Automation can allow us to focus on what is essential and avoid human intervention and time spent on chores. It also provides more confidence in our systems and processes, removes human errors and miscommunication, and speeds up the performance of teams. If you need an automation layer for your cloud resources, take a look at <a href="https://spacelift.io/?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=text&amp;utm_id=blogpost&amp;utm_content=%7Bdevops_best_practices%7D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Spacelift&#8217;s self-service infrastructure</a> (automated workflow management feature especially).
<h3>6. Incorporate Security Early in the Development Lifecycle</h3>
Security shouldn&#8217;t be one of the last things to integrate into software development. The birth of DevSecOps emphasizes thinking about application and infrastructure security early in the development lifecycle, incorporating security into the initial design and integrating it into the CI/CD pipelines. 
Security should be a responsibility shared among different teams and through the entire application lifecycle and be considered an integral part of the process, not an optional add-on. Recently, a strong focus has been given to securing the software supply chain due to increased malicious attacks over the last years.
In the world of infrastructure, even the tiniest of mistakes can cause major outages. That&#8217;s why Spacelift adds <a href="https://docs.spacelift.io/concepts/policy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">an extra layer of </a><a href="https://docs.spacelift.io/concepts/policy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">policy</a><a href="https://docs.spacelift.io/concepts/policy" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> that allows you to control</a> &#8211; separately from your infrastructure project &#8211; what code can be executed, what changes can be made, when and by whom. This isn&#8217;t only useful to protect yourself from the baddies but allows you to implement an automated code review pipeline<span data-key="3dc1c9be419548e2b421064b7e513810" data-slate-fragment="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">.
<h3>7. Learn from Incidents and Build Processes around Them</h3>
Incidents are inevitable in the IT world. It doesn&#8217;t matter how well prepared your team is; eventually, there will be an incident that you will have to address. In these cases, it&#8217;s essential to focus on blameless communication, understand the issue, communicate effectively with the affected parties, and collaborate to find a solution. 
Equally crucial to fixing the issue is to have a process to log incidents and learn from them. After the incident has been tackled, spend some time with your team to craft a post-incident review, and discuss how the incident was handled. Try to find any possible improvements in the incident handling process that can help you next time. 
<h3>8. Focus first on Concepts, then Find the Right Tools</h3>
The DevOps landscape is moving extremely fast, with new tools and services emerging daily. Instead of continuously integrating new shiny tools and services, concentrate on understanding the core concepts that allow companies to accelerate their business with DevOps practices. 
Only once you understand the concepts and prioritize the missing pieces accordingly, you will be successful in selecting the right tools for the job. Remember, you won&#8217;t be able to build everything within your team. It&#8217;s ok to rely on <a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/infrastructure-as-code#infrastructure-as-code-tooling" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DevOps tooling</a> and managed services when it makes sense. Be smart about how you use your team&#8217;s time, try to understand your in-house expertise and needs, put effort into building custom tooling when it makes sense, and rely on external tooling and services for the rest. 
<h3>9. Embrace Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Push for a Self-Service Infra Model</h3>
Cloud infrastructure should be considered an integral part of software development and treated equally to application code. By leveraging <a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/infrastructure-as-code" target="_blank" rel="noopener">infrastructure as code</a>, we can incorporate the best practices we use for software development, such as version control and CI/CD, into infrastructure creation. This model removes the need to manually set up and configure resources via UIs and further strengthens our automation efforts across the IT landscape. Changes are always auditable and transparent, and we can quickly roll back infrastructure systems to a previous state when there are issues. 
Thinking one step ahead, instead of adding another bottleneck of waiting for cloud infrastructure engineers to create the necessary resources, push for a self-service infrastructure model. In this model, the developers and anyone who needs infra resources can leverage some tooling to generate the required pieces. This way, we increase productivity and speed while giving autonomy to our developers, all via a single workflow. 
Check out <a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/how-specialized-solution-can-improve-your-iac" target="_blank" rel="noopener">how </a><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/how-specialized-solution-can-improve-your-iac" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Spacelift</a><a href="https://spacelift.io/blog/how-specialized-solution-can-improve-your-iac" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> can improve your IaC</a>, assist your team in adopting a collaborative infrastructure model and achieving operational excellence.

Along with the rise of DevOps, we have also seen many anti-patterns emerge. During the quest to adopt DevOps practices, people have misinterpreted their scope and made mistakes that lead to common anti-patterns. Let&#8217;s look at some common challenges, traps, and misconceptions companies face while implementing DevOps principles.
<h3>1. Don&#8217;t Create Separate DevOps Team</h3>
Common mistake companies make when adopting DevOps practices is creating a separate team to handle the DevOps transformation. Unfortunately, this adds one more silo to the process and breaks the central promise of DevOps, which is increased collaboration and shared ownership between the existing teams. 
Similarly, we see operations teams rebranding into DevOps teams without actual changes in organizations&#8217; culture, communication, and collaboration. DevOps is about bringing the different groups closer, not creating a new one. 
<h3>2. Avoid Having the DevOps Hero</h3>
At times, specific team members are more involved in the DevOps practices than others. That could be due to accumulated knowledge, a higher level of experience, or increased effort by a person. When this pattern emerges, it could lead quickly to the DevOps hero anti-pattern where a specific team member becomes indispensable to the team. 
This situation is highly problematic since the team&#8217;s performance and velocity depend on a single person. At the same time, this person may face an extremely high amount of work that eventually leads to burnout and potentially leaving the company. To avoid this anti-pattern, ensure the knowledge is spread across teams and team members. Divide the work equally and don&#8217;t rely on heroes but on teamwork and rigid processes to achieve results. 
<h3>3. Don&#8217;t Attempt to Automate and Change Everything at Once</h3>
Starting from scratch to apply DevOps practices in an organization could be daunting at first. As with most things, attempting to tackle everything at once is not the way to go. First, analyze the current situation and processes within your company. People usually don&#8217;t happily accept many changes, so you need to think strategically. Prioritize the tasks accordingly, find quick wins, automate the stuff that will have a higher impact, and focus on one thing at a time.
<h3>4. Avoid Chasing New Tools</h3>
As new services and tools pop up almost every day, adopting and using these new shiny toys is always tempting. It&#8217;s common for engineers to fall into this trap of introducing a new tool just because it&#8217;s trending without proper analysis of whether it&#8217;s needed or the best choice. 
Picking the right tools for the job is critical but is a process that should be reviewed meticulously. For every new service or tool we add, we should also consider its maintainability and the operational overhead, dependencies, complexity, and new cognitive load that we introduce in the process.
<h3>5. Don&#8217;t Sacrifice Quality for Speed</h3>
Since one of the main factors of DevOps success is velocity, many teams try to speed up their processes at the cost of quality and usually security. Many of the typical DevOps metrics are based on how fast we deliver, deploy and provide value, but they are not enough by themselves as they only tell half the story. Due to this disproportionate focus on speed, it&#8217;s easy to lose perspective of what is important; delivering quality software. Treat speed and quality equally, add meaningful automated tests and avoid cutting corners just to ship faster.
<h3>6. Don&#8217;t Give up on Continuous Improvement</h3>
Applying effective DevOps practices is a dynamic process that should be curated continuously. It might be tempting to rest and relax after implementing all the DevOps best practices in the roadmap, but unfortunately, this process never stops. 
Every step of the way, we should focus on reviewing our workflows and continuously improving our systems, processes, and products. We have to set up flows of constant feedback that allow us to review and reflect on our choices and ultimately improve. New paradigms, best practices, and improved models always appear, and we should be restless if we want our teams to survive, perform, and succeed. 
<h3>7. Don&#8217;t Neglect Documentation and Information Sharing</h3>
By definition, successful adoption of DevOps practices relies on sharing information efficiently within an organization and creating a workplace where collaboration thrives organically. Unfortunately, neglecting documentation and efficient information sharing is an anti-pattern that occurs too often in software teams. Documentation, when done right, could be a handy tool for developers. 
Try to integrate documentation tasks on team backlogs and treat docs as first-class citizens within your organization. Docs aren&#8217;t static and should be kept up to date, created consistently, and accessible to anyone who needs them.

We have explored different DevOps best practices and paradigms and analyzed how we can incorporate them to accelerate team performance and value creation. We also saw some hidden traps and anti-patterns to be aware of and avoid while pursuing DevOps excellence. 
Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I did.

Spacelift is a sophisticated SaaS product for Infrastructure as Code that helps DevOps develop and deploy new infrastructures or changes quickly and with confidence

Explore different DevOps Best Practices and Anti-Patterns and see how you can incorporate them to accelerate your team performance and value creation.

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