The international market size of DevOps was valued at $6.78 billion in 2020. Also, it is expected to reach $57.90 billion by 2030. It means that DevOps is expected to register a CAGR of 24.2% between 2020 and 2030. 

With the growing market size and demand, it becomes important for organizations to adopt DevOps. As the name implies, it is the combination of development and operation. When they work together, they can help with quickening organizational development. Apart from handling software production, DevOps technology also takes care of automatic deployment. 

To take the development to the next level, businesses require a framework that they can practice and also apply Lean and Agile principles. This is what Scaled Agile Framework or SAFe is all about. When SAFe and DevOps work together, organizations can achieve product delivery with not only improved speed but also better quality. Together, they can deliver value when businesses need it. Many organizations know the benefits of integrating these two. So, they are inclined towards this integration. 

Indeed, you can find many frameworks. Nevertheless, SAFe is the most widely adopted and accepted framework. More than 20,000 organizations and 1,000,000 practitioners across the world in different industries trust SAFe. 

DevOps and SAFe – Basics

The DevOps methodology strongly emphasizes communication and cooperation between the operations and development teams to generate more dependable, regular and quicker software releases. In the SAFe atmosphere, DevOps is integrated into the continuous delivery pipeline. This is an important element of the DevOps SAFe capabilities. 

DevOps is a set of technical practices, culture and mindset that chains the collaboration, automation and integration required for effective development and operation of a solution.

With SAFe, organizations can achieve greater customer happiness, better quality and quicker time-to-market. To achieve these things, many of them embrace DevOps techniques and principles. 

SAFe, as you might be aware, is an Agile Framework. It mainly helps development teams. It is built on three pillars. They are portfolio, program and team. Above all, this framework enables a product team to function flexibly. Further, it aids with the management of issues that larger organizations face when they implement Agile. This framework is a large knowledge foundation of established best practices. Product teams also use it to produce software products successfully.

The goal of DevOps in SAFe is simple. It is to deliver value as and when a business needs it. According to a study, teams that adopt DevOps, deploy 209 times more frequently on an average. Also, they do this 106 times quicker. Further, studies show that they face 7 times fewer failures. As compared to low-performing teams, they recover from incidents 2604 times quicker.

DevOps in SAFe

DevOps is a combination of a mindset, a culture and technological processes according to the Scaled Agile Framework. It enables, communication, integration, automation and intimate collaboration. These things will happen among all individuals involved in the planning, development, testing deployment, release and maintenance of a system. In a Lean Enterprise, DevOps will be part of the Agile Product Delivery Skill. The key purpose of DevOps in SAFe is to offer value anytime a business needs it. This is something that organizations can do. 

Know About DevSecOps

You are here to learn about the goal of DevOps in SAFe. In this process, you should know about DevSecOps. It is nothing but a term that pays attention to proper information security practices. It is followed in pursuit of continuous delivery. DevOps does not openly encompass security as a crucial concern. This, in turn, gave birth to DevSecOps. 

It has gained popularity as a term that gets rid of any security risks. The security community has improved DevOps thinking far more than its operations and development bases. According to a DevOps Research Product, the security of an organization improves when it gets part of the value stream entirely. Even, the most efficiently framed DevOps initiatives can turn out to be unfruitful when outdated security practices are followed. 

To encourage collaboration between security, operations and development teams in an organization, the Open Web Application Security project is seen as the most dependable tool. The torchbearer in the DevSecOps platform initiative is the United States Air Force. This organization has demonstrated that bringing together advanced security and DevOps practices will help with plug-and-play software programs that can streamline the delivery processes in a better way. 

Due to these contributions, security has now been deeply incorporated into the culture of DevOps. The outcome is that both DevOps and DevSecOps have turned out to denote the same concept for all practical purposes. Each of them implies a set of combined practices from multiple architecture, infrastructure, security, operations, development, etc all through the value stream. They work together to make safety, quality, speed and collaboration possible. 

Carrying the sentiment forward, the Scaled Agile Framework treats security as a major concern. In Scaled Agile Framework, DevOps denotes DevSecOps. It means safeguarding businesses, families, soldiers, citizens, employees and customers is not something that we do not select or select to do in DevOps. It is ingrained in our DNA. So, modern security practices shine all through in different domains of the Scaled Agile Framework including extended SAFe guidance content, assessments, courseware, Framework guidance, Big Picture, etc. These are simply a few examples of the DevSecOps movement that has lifted DevOps to fresh standards of excellence. 

In the Scaled Agile Framework, Agile Release Trains are the basic value delivery constructs. Every Agile Release Train has all the skills required not only for developing but also for releasing a solution. It encompasses those responsible for Verification and Validation, Testing, Quality Assurance, Compliance and Security. 

Every increment that the Agile Release Train builds evaluates the viability of the present solution and its marching towards offering early feedback, compliance, quality and security on the ultimate fitness of the system for use. Thereafter, specifications are generated early and developed in small batches with quicker feedback on decisions and the chance for ongoing assessment and review. Agile Release Trains cannot implement security via inspection. Rather, it should be built into the solution at the time of every iteration. Security testing should move left for the prevention of vulnerabilities and should be automated to increase the accuracy and velocity of compliance.

Incorporation of DevOps in SAFe

The basic goal of DevOps in SAFe is to help organizations deliver value to customers continuously. With this objective, businesses can follow the CAMLR approach when they integrate DevOps into the Scaled Agile Framework. With this framework, they can achieve not only continuous integration but also continuous deployment and release as and when demand occurs. CAMLR denotes Culture, Automation, Lean Flow, Measurement and Recovery.

The Role of DevOps in the Success of SAFe

DevOps can bring the following benefits to organizations:

• Improves efficiency with automation
• Improves speed and stability with software deployment and even development
• Optimizes the organization as a whole
• When DevOps is integrated into SAFe, it will help organizations pay attention to what matters the most
• Obviously, for any business, customers hold the biggest value.
• DevOps helps overcome the long-standing separation between Development and Operations
• Also, with DevOps, organizations can gain complete control over setup and deployment
• It will strengthen many principles of SAFe including small batch sizes, short iterations and quick feedback.

Helps with Continuous Delivery

In the Scaled Agile Framework, DevOps makes sure of continuous delivery. Every business intends to deliver true value to both customers and stakeholders. So, they should consider mastering the technical aspects of DevOps. Constant innovations happen in the business world these days. In the same way, skills are readily available for businesses. However, when scaling, it is hard to achieve continuous delivery. On the flip side, these hardships can be navigated using the Scaled Agile Framework’s approach to DevOps.

Tips for SAFe DevOps Success

Indeed, the key purpose of DevOps in SAFe is to make continuous delivery possible. As mentioned earlier, some organizations might face hardships when integrating SAFe and DevOps. Here are some tips to ensure successful integration of the Scaled Agile Framework and DevOps:

1. It is better to start things simple.
2. Also, it is always recommended to think long-term when arriving at decisions
3. It would be good to define some useful metrics
4. The focus should be the mantra when integrating SAFe and DevOps
5. Experimenting should be part of this process and should never be overlooked for fear of failure

Importance of DevOps in SAFe

Many organizations have started using the Scaled Agile Framework. However, they fail to integrate DevOps into SAFe. The DevOps integration into SAFe is important for the reasons listed below:

1. Quicker time to market
2. Improved quality
3. Better efficiency
4. Improved collaboration
5. Better security

Conclusion

The key purpose of DevOps in SAFe is to achieve speed and accuracy. In software development, the DevOps approach can aid with making sure that the code is tested and released not only with velocity but also with accuracy. In turn, the risk of errors is reduced. There will be an increase in the probability of errors when automating different elements of the software delivery process. These errors can be eliminated by integrating DevOps into SAFe. The continuous delivery pipeline and Lean-Agile Concepts of SAFe also help teams improve productivity. In turn, they can release software quicker without any compromise on quality.