Salesforce DevOps can prove to be extremely useful for IT companies with its ability to automate the delivery pipelines of companies.  In this competitive world, surviving is getting difficult as tight-rope walking for IT companies. So to strive and survive, it is critical to developing products faster.  To shorten this, Salesforce DevOps encourages collaborative efforts where the team works together and gets the job done efficiently and quickly. Salesforce DevOps enables IT organizations can become agile and innovative.

Salesforce DevOps transformation will bring significant cultural and procedural changes and help in shared decision-making. While collaboration and standardization will eventually refine and lead to steady optimization. It will also enable tracking of the metrics.

Points to keep in mind before implementing DevOps

First, you need to measure how things work currently and identify the pain points.

Gauge the current position of the organization on different metrics such as agility and ability to handle change. 

Resolve the issues that are apparent by employing tools and techniques and structuring them. 

Then repeat the steps. DevOps is not a one-time implementation thing and as new issues emerge, repeat the process and make changes as needed.

How Salesforce DevOps Can Help You To Transform Your Business?

A) Improvement in The Build Quality

DevOps gives rise to the culture of knowledge and information sharing with the collaboration of development and operations. As a result, it brings together both dev-centric attributes such as features, performance, and reusability and ops-centric attributes such as deployability and maintainability to uplift the overall code quality. 

B) Improved Recovery in case of mishaps

Companies have to live with the threat of IT failure that can happen at any time. This is bad for the reputation of companies; especially if the customer-facing side of the business is affected. In DevOps’ incremental and ongoing development approach, which allows possibilities of changes in case of disaster. If you are releasing hundreds of changes in one large deployment, you are closer to failure and bad recovery. Simply because you will have to reinvent the wheel again by starting to code and deploy from the scratch.

C) No Conflict Between Stability vs. New Features

In the DevOps environment, the entire team is involved in ensuring new features and stability. The combination of a shared codebase, continuous integration, test-driven techniques and automated deploys expose problems earlier in the process, as the code isn’t hurled towards the operations team at its end. Besides, access to real-time data allows DevOps engineers to quickly understand the impact of application changes. As there is no need for team members to wait for a different team to troubleshoot and fix the problem, resolution times are on the lower side.

D) Better Economies of Scale

Along with effective collaboration, DevOps also bring sound automation. Companies can leverage this feature to automate repetitive tasks without getting worried about errors. For instance, regression and performance testing can bring about a small change in a rapid manner. Development can become more robust and stable through frequent backups and rollovers. If all these functions get automated, companies can curtail large manual costs. If the scope of a company is large, this can seriously mean significant monetary savings.

E) Accelerated Application Delivery through Agile

Traditionally, the development team first builds the code and then tests it in an isolated environment, where the operations team takes over for production. This non-alignment between the two teams throws up lots of misunderstandings, as they aren’t on the same ground regarding infrastructure, configuration, deployment, log management, and performance monitoring. In turn, it slows down the production process.

Conclusion

As DevOps brings synchronization among all the IT-related teams, companies can actually accelerate delivery and cut down the release time. Moreover, it allows early detection of errors that keep code in a releasable state all the time. Due to the cumulative effects of all these factors, companies can go to market in a desirable time and reap the benefits of a competitive edge. Want to know more details about it? Reach out to our award-winning team at GoodWorklabs here. 

When it comes to administering a project, the most common goal of every organization is to accomplish it within the deadline with zero possible errors. And in that case, both agile and waterfall methodology is in the game! However, being a product owner, it’s indeed your responsibility to opt for the best-fit choice. Because each product has individual prerequisites and each methodology comes with its own perk. So, making a choice between agile and water methodology entirely relies on the type of project. But still, to help you make a decision, here we will be comparing both, explaining their benefits, features, and approaches.

What is the chief difference between agile and waterfall methodology?

Both waterfall and agile are two popular management methodologies in the software development industry. But there is a fine line that distinguishes the two, i.e., their approach and functionality. In simple terms, waterfall methodology is a linear process where a team needs to execute each step in a project before proceeding to the next phase. On the other hand, the agile methodology involves working synchronously on different aspects of a project. 

Now let’s learn about each management methodology in detail

Agile Methodology

Agile Methodology is extremely flexible and requires team initiative to accomplish a project. Well, there is no denying that a software development program can take years to complete. And what if the technology changes in between? To adapt to changes and modifications in technologies even late in the development program, the agile methodology was first introduced. The best part of this development methodology tends to complete a project with a short deadline.

However, the only downfall it can experience is: that the team might need to put more effort in the later stages if changes need to be made for the former phases. 

Waterfall methodology

The waterfall methodology is particularly suitable for projects where the final outcome is lucidly established right from the beginning. To be more precise, waterfall methodology is applied when the objectives of each step in a particular project are clear. So, the team needs to work on each aspect at a single time. Due to this reason, the project can take more time to finish. Also, it can create a hindrance when the stakeholders figure out any error in the later phases of the development program.

The comparison between the two – 

Both the development methodology comes with their individual perks and drawbacks. And basically, the project type determines which will be the safest bet to work with. So comparing waterfall with agile will be futile in general. Still, we have juxtaposed the two for easy decision-making depending on the projects.

• Flexibility

Speaking of flexibility, agile is more flexible and can welcome certain changes during ongoing development. Waterfall, on the other hand, has a fixed timetable where the entire development program is mapped out beforehand.

• Client involvement

Agile needs the client’s involvement in each stage of the project development. Whereas, once the goal of a project is established, the waterfall does not ask the clients to take part in the project. Though it has its own disadvantages but it is primarily useful for clients with busy schedules and where the project details do not client’s intervention in between

• Budget

In terms of budget, the waterfall methodology works within a pre-fixed pricing quote. However, agile methodology encourages multiple experiments and modifications which can massively alter the pre-planned budget but is beneficial as it gives insight to the clients as and when the project proceeds.

Final Words

If you’re confused between agile and waterfall methodology, it’s always better to consult experts who will understand your project requirement and give you the right suggestion. As for GoodWorkLabs, we follow the agile methodology of managing projects as it keeps both the client and developers on the same page. To more about our ways of working, reach out to our expert team here. 

Agile Methodology Tools in Business

Timely delivering projects under a defined deadline and a set budget is a priority for those companies who wish to maintain their credibility, reputation, and prestige. Projects that get delayed give a hard time to the enterprises throughout their hierarchy because late project delivery has a significant impact on the morale, level of productivity and focus as well. To make matters worse, incorrect implementation of agile methodology might force the employees to leave the company due to excessive stress.

In such a stressful situation, the single best thing an employer can do is to take a step in the right direction at agile methodology, which is where the real tools of project management enter to play. The tools help in the identification of the actual status of a project, the expected tenure of a project and all its practical applications.

Entering into the world of project management, one is a witness of the importance of flexible working methods while also ensuring the implementation of futuristic and latest techniques for gathering the results quickly. There are some project management tools which come in handy to assist in the implementation of Agile project methodology of management.

The eight best tools which we have for you to choose from are:

1. Trello

One of the most widely utilized tools of project management, Trello is renowned for its straightforward user interface (UI) and easy usability. The functioning of Trello can be figured out even by a beginner who does not have too much knowledge in the field of project management.

Trello gives you cards along with dragged columns. The primary columns are three of them that include To Do, Doing, Done. Pulling the map to the appropriate box involves the rest of the tool to plot and create new columns, a rapid and simple procedure.

The cards are objects which can be assigned to resources that are relevant and include the estimation, completion process as well as delivery dates of the projects underway. The reputation of Trello is evident from the fact that even Twitter makes the use of Trello.

2. Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) 

If you love using Microsoft Stack, VSTS is the perfect tool for your needs. The device facilitates easy integration with Visual Studio, helping manage a technical project with maximum ease. Until five users, the option of using VSTS is free and some premium features that can be purchased. The best feature of VSTS is the mechanism to trace any changes in the code which is the best thing a developer can ever hope for.

3. JIRA 

When you talk about authenticity, Jira is that tool which lives up to your expectation in project management and is known for being the best tool for tracking the records of jobs done through Agile management. Be it small businesses, enterprises or big organizations, Jira is ideal for business of all sizes.

Just like Trello, columns and tickets are there for you to display the different phases of your work. These tickets can be made and then be attached to a resource. When you complete a sprint, the performance of each can be measured through pie charts and graphics representations too.

4. AXOSOFT 

It is a software for an Agile project which is helpful in the identification of bugs in the project and then taking up an accurate Scrum framework to plan these projects. Axosoft has many tools which make the developers work conveniently and create features which are under the budget, on the right schedule and free of bugs.  

Agile followers are in love with Axosoft because of the way this software helps business through the creation of an Agile workflow. The progress report of each is very transparent, and Axosoft also keeps it centralized which ultimately results in practicing Agile methodology to a maximum extent in any team.

5. ASANA 

Asana is one among the best task managing software, and facilitates a team for planning, sharing and tracking the advancement of a project with the mapping of every resource’s performance within the organization.

The interface is pretty easy. You need to create a workplace, add the projects required for completion. It is easy to allot, track and organize the tasks thereafter. You can also add up notes, comments, and tags to be clear and expressive with the motto.

6. Zoho Sprints 

Zoho Sprints assigns you the authority for creating backlogs through a drag and drop feature. You can also stretch the stories of individual users with priorities, which is an added feature other than allotting tasks to a team.

Every work item can be noted duly in a time sheet that has budget control measures like the billable and non-billable hours for a particular piece of the project.

7. WRIKE 

Wrike tool has dashboards, customizable workloads, and charts which boost a project in flowing freely. There are a lot of updating options where all kinds of scattered information that rests on your mail, images, and documents can be easily accessed. Simply put, WRIKE helps in streamlining the workflow that is relevant to the timely completion of a project.

WRIKE also features the collection of necessary information from the cloud, sending of emails and also seamlessly merges with applications like JIRA and Salesforce.

8. Velocity Chart 

This tool helps to have an idea about the value that is generated in every single sprint, helping you to estimate the amount of work which will be completed in subsequent runs. In other words, you can easily measure the velocity of your team’s work.

The Velocity Chart adds up the estimates for every complete and incomplete story. These estimates can be on factors like hours, business value and any other factors that can be assigned to a numerical value.

If you wish to include Agile methodology in your project management practice, the eight tools that we listed above can prove to be crucial to have quick and efficient project management. If you would like to implement agile methodologies to your project, you can contact us here.