Introduction

The waterfall method of software development sustains higher quality output and reliable standards of software product. But on other side, this approach upsets the interdepartmental communication and a huge period of time wastes in generating irrelevant features. Also, the limited communication sometimes leads into misinterpretation and more time is invested to meet the requirements of client.

The business of software development in its agile software development atmosphere feels trepidation for required changes and quality issue of delivered project. The resource libraries differs for different environment and software developed on windows platform requires load balancers to deploy software in Linux environment. The gap between platforms disables certain features or seeks different operational behaviors for delivering an action.

The lob it over the wall philosophy among business analysts, system admins, developers and testers degrades the end product. The performance of software gets affected as every department performs tests for concerned parts of program on local environments and shows success output. Often the silos do not belong to same office or sometimes even same country and the development, testing and deployment cycle ends in unresolved issues.

In this paper, DevOps tools and methodologies are explored that brings the software development on common platform for all departments. DevOps results in better analysis of system’s performance in earlier stage of development and resource optimization through ‘all hands on dock’ mentality.

Waterfall Hardship

Conventional waterfall methods suffer severely where the product is object oriented or have high probability of considerable changes. The ‘Us and Them’ approach of various teams persists as every team has knowledge of only their part of software instead of anyone having the holistic view. The different environments leads non-supporting components that shows anonymous behavior to user inputs. Every single feature requires developer to dive in every supporting logic and updating the concerned files. The individual files are updated and executed to find error. The bigger the programs are, the larger amount of files come into play.        For the final product, the system complies all the files and generates result for relevant query. The developers generally have no idea that how their locally generated working code will perform in deployment environment. The waterfall development thus gives severe stress in large number of queries and quality issues of bigger projects.

The development of project at one location and deployment in other itself inherits several challenges for deployment team. The different platforms do not support each other without proper configuration and maneuvering the constraints using compatibility layers. Else the network engineers seeks custom developed API from scratch from the domain expert. This layer transcripts the API of one environment into another to understand query and produce results out of system. The compatibility layers are only gap fillers and their use does not guarantee the availability of complete features of program. The project gets complicated when the programs responds perfectly on developer’s machine but not on client’s machine. As the crack responsible for it is generally unknown, the departments refrain from taking responsibility. The patches are applied instead of identifying the actual problem due to constraints of time and resources; but leads in major complications that hampers upgrading and updating software to meet new requirements. In both case, it is quite evident that every time a new deployment environment will consume significant time and software will perform less than expected.

The waterfall was once known as linear-sequential life cycle model due to its simplicity and easy to implement scenario. The system is more or less still exists in smaller organizations that survives on simple projects for single user where few and definite actions were configured. However, with today’s global scope of business, softwares are expected to perform more than intended. The limitations of waterfall in such case are significant to compensate the requirements of complex, prone to change systems. Following list, without diving deep, highlights broad classification of limitations:

• The phrases of code are significantly independent of each other so as the model runs smoothly in one phase before hovering to another stage.
• The software requirements are fully identified and not prone to any change (except maintenance) beyond deployment.
• The deployment and development platforms are identical and software runs smoothly on both platforms without jiggle in performance.
• The project is small enough to be delivered as complete solution instead of supplying part deliverables.

Model do not require prototyping to illustrate the functioning of various systems and requirements are accessed via ‘Software Requirement Specifications’ (SRS) document.

How DevOps help

DevOps has no definition of its own. It can be a group of people called polyglot programmers or use of sophisticated tools that makes the development hassle free. The polyglot programmers are domain expert of various platforms and are bridge builders between local development environment and client’s deployment environment. DevOps can be understood as the practice in an organization where the developers, testers, system admins and supporting staff work together out of their comfort zone in favor of a project as they understand the importance of generating revenues by shipping the deliverables. The key aspect of using the term DevOps is to ensure quality and mitigating the inter-department communication between IT, business analyst and development (development covers developing, testing and deployment) teams.

DevOps encourages the practice where not only development of product but also complete support and operation of product have equal importance. To assemble all the requirements under single roof, it is important that complete team work synchronously or use a same platform for development, testing and deployment of code. The second prospect seems feasible as in global market, the teams work in different locations and synchronous working is quite difficult. Here, we shall discuss how a common platform not only helps the production, but business analysts to demonstrate the actual graphical user interface of working model. 1179

System on cloud

When the development is severaged from local platform to a cloud, many of the constraints of agile development can be minimized. The compatibility issues of local and server configurations get fixed by using cloud platform for development. Development on cloud platform helps developers to verdict response of program at initial stage of development and depreciate ‘it is working on my machine’ term. With same platform on cloud, the responsibility of all teams fall into one place and performance index of overall development and operation gets accelerated.

A software on a cloud is accessible from anywhere using a secure connection to server. With cloud, the operation and development can be simultaneously performed from different locations on same piece of code. The operations on cloud is fruitful not only for vendor company but also provides inherit advantages at client’s side. In this global market the cloud has gained much interest as the businesses prefer to focus on their investments in growth of business instead of building and sustaining IT infrastructure. The cloud provides multiple options where an organization can access services based on lower licensing cost instead of higher infrastructure setup.

DevOps practicing using Turanto

Turanto is a cloud based application development cum prototyping tool for enterprise level applications for everyone (technical and non-technical). The prototype by Turanto is nothing but a working application with standards ASP.net code based on MVC framework. Modeling an application in Turanto by non-technical persons (for example: business analyst, sales person etc.) requires a better understanding of requirements from customer. The applications can be developed and deployed on server in few minutes via highly interactive modeling platform that is accessible using a web browser and secure login credentials. The applications via Turanto possess similar architecture and everyone in application development benefits themselves every time through this. Application access can be restricted using roles and permissions and data is secured using three level security. As the application is working, the developers have a working code and only needs to modify for customized requirements.

Application development is progressed on cloud in Turanto and business analyst demonstrate a working application to the client. With smooth create, update and deployment of application reduces the efforts of persona with greater perspective of deliverable application. The holistic view of application by all the departments of development and operation and a working code deployed on a private cloud multifold the quality and work efficiency to a higher level. The developers can be communicated with actual need and with better understanding, resources can be optimized towards a relevant task. To make application more specific according to particular needs of client, the developers can now focus on enhancement of application instead of creating application from scratch. The testing and operation can be performed directly on deployed application and being developed on same cloud, developers can resolve the queries without complications.

Turanto Additional Benefits

Turanto is a Platform-as-a-Service (PAAS) that has numerous features to ease your effort in building application. Some of high prospect features are:

• A prototype of application can be launched and deployed as working web application, mobile application and android APK application with single click.
• The application has functionality to use mobile’s GPS and camera features to locate position and pick pictures respectively.
• The generated applications are accessible directly by URL through a web browser on an internet enabled device.
• The application can automatically be created using existing database.
• You can create application URL for existing application.
• The application and database can be versioned by importing them into new application without losing control of settings.
• Any number of roles and users can be added for a particular application.
• You can set SMTP server settings for email.

Conclusion

DevOps is the practice of mitigating the constraints of waterfall development via various methods favorable for project and organization. It brings various teams on same platform for efficient communication and delivering expected quality service to client. The polyglot programmers are the key aspect between the development and organization sides of a program as they bridge the gap through knowledge of various platforms. The use of cloud encompass the development, testing and deployment and loses problems associated with versioning and API mapping. Turanto enhances the efficiency by creating a prototype cum working application and availing code of it. This practice initiated few years ago is expected to overtake the conventional waterfall method.