Both speed and protection are essential. Traditional thought held that the two were mutually exclusive, that rapid creation and introduction of apps and software services inevitably resulted in increased risk. It has become clear that speed, continuous integration, and security are essential components of the software development cycle.
The stakes are enormous, with some forecasts predicting a $10.5 trillion annual cost of cybercrime losses and damage by 2025.
However, there are many aspects to integrating security in a system. The best way is through Dev Sec Ops or Development + Security + Operations.
Release management can be intimidating because DevSecOps practices can bring incredible peace, security, and quality to the application development lifecycle. However, DevSecOps’ increased visibility and coordination can also help with the release management process.
What Is The Concept Of Release Management?
Release management is a method for managing the entire product delivery lifecycle in software development and IT operations, from planning to building to testing to implementation. This is the general procedure for both IT Infrastructure Library and DevSecOps.
DevSecOps, on the other hand, promotes greater security, teamwork, and accountability in the entire development process, reducing feedback loops and promoting easier, quicker, and more secure release management.
Best Practices for DevSecOps Release Management
Define Performance Requirements
More stable releases would result from clear acceptance criteria in both releases and testing. There can’t be any arbitrary criterion for a good release. If that’s the case, you won’t learn from your mistakes and repeat the release management process to find out what works more efficiently.
Before going forward with any new project, product owners, quality managers, and release managers must identify key release indicators and agree on approval criteria.
Aim for the Least Amount of User Impact
Of course, successful release managers would try to minimize downtime and consumer impact. Active tracking, proactive testing, and real-time collaborative alerting can help you spot problems during a rollout – even before a customer notices. With a collaborative incident management plan in place, the team will address issues rapidly and move forward toward a successful release.
Make the Most of Your Staging Room
Maintaining the staging area and keeping it as close to your production environment as possible will lead to more efficient launches. To find any problems with a new implementation, each individual involved, from product owners to QA, should go through staging and test runs.
One can quickly identify problems in staging before the deployment of the code to production if your staging environment is nearly identical to production. Customers will be less impacted by a well-designed staging area, and DevSecOps teams will be able to meet approval requirements faster.
CI/CD and QA Processes Have Been Simplified
In DevOps, the shift-left concept is widely used. The DevOps team will find potential problems quicker by bringing QA, automation, and testing earlier in the development process. This cuts down on time spent in feedback loops, allowing the distribution pipeline to keep moving forward.
The further research and production workflows can be integrated, the simpler it will be to maintain a stable CI/CD pipeline.
Make the Most of Automation
The first rule of DevOps is to automate anything that can help your people, processes, and technology work more efficiently. Automation should be utilized to reduce human error and make daily operations simpler for the people, whether in software development, QA, or IT operations.
You’ll be able to reliably provide quality services to your customers if you motivate your team to utilize more time on strategic building and less time on daily tasks.
When You Have the Opportunity, Make Things Immutable
An immutable object’s state cannot be changed once it has been formed in programming. Since immutable programming forces teams to deploy completely new configurations rather than updating existing ones, you’ll avoid the potential for errors and bugs that come with changing existing configurations. As a result, releases are generally more secure, making consumers and employees happy.
Final Thoughts
People-centric DevSecOps processes inevitably contribute to a stronger release management system, establishing best practices for coordination, security, and testing through the entire delivery lifecycle.
While many people think of automation as the most important value in Dev Sec Ops, automation should always increase the team’s efficiency. People inevitably begin to release reliable and secure services more rapidly as they reduce human errors and improve operational performance.
These best practices for DevSecOps release management are just the beginning. Our release management processes must evolve as technology advances, and people continue to learn. Any good Dev Sec Ops release management structure requires continuous improvement of staff, processes, and technology.