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General Considerations

While developing code the focus must be on the main targets of development and operations teams:

  • Development teams require flexibility
    For leveraging the benefits of DevOps it is crucial to provide a reliable and fest deployment pipeline. Integration and automatization of the pipeline is a must have to achieve this aim. This can be done by considering the following points:
    • Version Control and Branching
      Concurrent Version System (CVS / 1980), Subversion (SVN / 2000) or Git (2005) can be used to branch and merge code and provide traceability for code changes.
    • Feature Toggles
      Feature toggles, flags or switches enable new functionality via an external configuration parameter. Therefore new features can be introduced but switched off. They are inroduced via simple if-structures to enable/disable the new feature.
    • Configuration Parameters
      Multiple elements must be controlled from outside the application, e.g. environment configurations (endpoints, mocks, etc.), feature toggles or confidential authentication. This supports confidentiality and provides flexibility during deployments.
  • Operational teams require stability and quality
    For smooth operations reliable code is a must have to operate in calm environment. Therefore test automatization, quality gates, logging, monitoring and further topics must be established to achieve this aim. This can be done by considering the following topics:
    • Test Harnesses
      Collections of software and test data to test a program unit by running under varying conditions. It generates a report which – at minimum – contain a list of failed tests.
    • Negative Tests
      Negative tests do not follow the happy-path of tests. These tests contain actions in an incorrect order (clicking buttons, calling commands, terminating UI sessions, etc.), simulate connectivity issues or drops, etc. These tests verify that the application degrade or fails gracefully.
    • Regression Tests
      Regression tests contain a test suite and aim to avoid re-introducing already fixed tests. This can be done by verifying functionality via unit or integration tests.