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DevOps consulting services in 2023: Benefits and risks

DevOps

DevOps consulting services involve hiring a team of experts to help projects implement the best DevOps practices in their software development and delivery routine. Such companies provide guidance, strategy, and technical expertise to improve the efficiency and quality of the software delivery pipeline. 

Getting a professional consultation on organizing the development processes is a game changer for most projects. Even without direct involvement in the work itself, morphing the way your app is created into more productive and efficient can drastically decrease the time-to-market and development costs and increase the dev team’s satisfaction. Ultimately, you’ll get a high-quality product faster, with lower expenses and less stress.

DevOps consulting services are a valuable investment for organizations looking to improve their software development pipeline and stay competitive in today’s fast-paced business environment. 

More on reasons to hire a DevOps consulting team

In 2023, there’s no need to develop a DevOps department inside of the company or a startup when you can hire consultants who’ll do the same job with a higher level of technical expertise and project experience than an in-house newbie. 

Companies usually hire a DevOps consultant to compensate:

  • A lack of expertise or improvement ideas. The helicopter view you need isn’t available from the inside of the organization you work for. Also, many personal interests are involved in decision-making processes, and no one wants to share critical notions about their colleagues’ work or change the stone-like processes. So that’s when the outer specialist can be helpful. Get a transparent estimation of the state of things in your development and prepare the whole team for changes and little earthquakes.
  • Processes flaws and team disunity: DevOps practices emphasize collaboration, automation, and continuous improvement. By finding the weak spots in both human and technological resources application, a consultant may make the complex and junk processes easier, more transparent, and more efficient. And they can decrease the stress and frustration levels of specialists involved in these processes. 
  • Low improvement budget: Although implementing DevOps practices can be time-consuming and requires significant resources, the earlier you start them in your work, the better and faster the whole development process will be. Even if you do not have all the required resources from the beginning, you can start with consultancy to see the full picture of improvements to make and start implementing them on the go. 
  • Invisible expenses here and there: DevOps practices can help organizations save money by reducing errors, improving efficiency, and speeding up time-to-market. A DevOps consulting team can help identify cost-saving opportunities and implement practices to reduce expenses.
  • Need for ongoing support: DevOps practices require ongoing maintenance and support to ensure they continue to deliver results over time. A DevOps consulting team can provide ongoing support to help an organization’s teams adjust to the new processes and tools and ensure they work effectively.

The DevOps consulting process 

No matter which consulting company you choose, they will take you through a single line of stages:

  1. Assessment. As a result, you’ll get an analysis of the current pipeline and an action plan of improvements to implement.
  2. Strategy Design. The strategy typically includes selecting tools, processes, and best practices that will work best specifically for this situation and are 100% aligned with your team’s goals and budgets.
  3. Implementation. This may involve setting up infrastructure, configuring tools, and training teams on new processes and practices.
  4. Testing and Feedback. The consultant conducts testing to ensure all new processes work effectively and gathers feedback from the dev team to identify what else may be improved.
  5. Ongoing Support. While your company grows, new challenges for the DevOps consultant may appear. Also, with this option, you’ll get a guarantee that the results of improvement implementations won’t fade away as the consultant stops working with your team. 

Risks of hiring the “wrong” consulting team

Long story short, you’ll get quite the opposite of what you expect:

  • Messy roadmap of questionable actions. Don’t believe their advice if your consultant can’t explain a direct connection between the tools/processes/technologies they offer to implement and expected outcomes. Remember that this is your sole responsibility for such an investment, and choose only those professionals who can explain their approach from A to Z.
  • Increased costs. The messy plan leads to unorchestrated activity. And in its turn, it causes unnecessary expenses, delays, errors, etc. 
  • Danger security risks. DevOps processes are highly involved in operating sensitive data, and a low-specialized consulting team may not have the necessary security measures in place to protect it. This could result in data breaches or other security incidents, putting your project at risk.
  • Team demotivation. The consultant you hire should be a harbinger of positive changes. And if the situation turns out the opposite, your team will doubt your ability to manage the process and care for them. If your experts are forced to follow DevOps’s low-quality advice, they won’t be happy with that. 

So there you have it. As of 2023, the DevOps consultancy is not rocket science for anyone, be sure to use these services from the very beginning of your project and select only talented teams for that to avoid any possible risks.