The DevOps Practices That Actually Ship
DevOps has become a buzzword soup. Everyone's talking about CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and observability. But what actually moves the needle?
The Core Practices
After years of leading engineering teams, these are the practices that consistently deliver results:
1. Automated Testing That Actually Runs
Not just unit tests. Integration tests. End-to-end tests. Tests that run on every commit and actually catch bugs before production.
2. Feature Flags for Everything
Deploy code without deploying features. Roll out gradually. Roll back instantly. This is non-negotiable for modern engineering teams.
3. Observability from Day One
You can't fix what you can't see. Logging, metrics, and tracing need to be built in from the start, not bolted on later.
The Anti-Patterns
What doesn't work:
- Manual deployment processes
- Testing only in production
- Waiting for "the right time" to add monitoring
What You Should Do Monday Morning
Your Monday morning checklist:
- Add feature flags to your next feature (use LaunchDarkly, Split, or even a simple config)
- Set up basic error tracking (Sentry, Rollbar, or similar)
- Write one integration test for your most critical user flow
- Document your deployment process - if it's not automated, make that visible
Start with one. Ship it. Then move to the next.
Ship Fast, Ship Safe
The goal isn't to ship faster at the expense of quality. It's to ship faster because of quality practices. These fundamentals make that possible. ```
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