All the answers to your DevOps dilemmas

Security is paramount, and rightly so, but moving at pace with DevOps can leave many managers and engineers feeling like they're on the back foot. Here, Jobin Kuruvilla, Head of DevOps for Adaptavist's Professional Services, shares his top five tips for stepping up security, from taking a top-down approach to setting security standards to the importance of tools like policy-based access controls, compliance testing, and dependency scanning.

Not everyone likes change, especially if it means upending the way they've been working for years. The key to overcoming cultural resistance is acknowledging that change doesn't happen overnight. Define your goals, be clear and consistent with messaging, and always lead by example. Once you've measured and marketed the success of your early efforts, it'll be easier to bring others along for the ride, as Matt Saunders, DevOps Lead in the Office of the CTO, explains…

If you're worried about what you're spending on DevOps, you're not alone. But with no fixed cost as a reference (except your own budget), Daniel Chalk, Engineering Manager, recommends focusing on areas you want to amplify, investing in continuous improvement to ensure best practice, and measuring the cost of change against the value it generates.

Codifying the configuration of legacy applications can help with automation, version control, consistent configuration, and simplified maintenance. However, as Temi Ogunsipe, senior DevOps consultant, explains, full codification might not be feasible right away. Instead, take an incremental approach, modernising your system by focusing on codifying server provisioning, network setups and storage, environment variables, database settings, and deployment processes.

When it comes to DevOps, ROI is not immediate. Of course, there will be obvious benefits, but the most significant returns come when you start innovating. Want to get there faster? Maggie Novakova, Head of North America New Business Sales, suggests measuring everything, clearly defining your objectives, getting buy-in from across the business, investing in your people, carrying out a value-stream analysis, implementing a continuous improvement culture, and evolving with technology.

Scalability goes far beyond adding services and expanding your infrastructure – it means ensuring your systems, tools, and teams can scale seamlessly as your organisation evolves. To start building a more scalable approach, Adaptavist's staff platform engineer, Lilly Howden, says you need to understand your different teams' maturity levels, choose tools and tech that grow with your organisation, modernise for scalability, and build shared, scalable infrastructure.