In this four part series I will go over how I added the DevOps software development methodology to a legacy project. This project consisted of a few Enterprise Java Applications/Systems, however this information will be relevant for any type of software development.
I joined a small company in need of some serious retooling and updates in the summer of 2012. The company will be the focus of this case study and will outline how the project was turned around. The case study will take a look at some popular tools used for DevOps, like Git, Jenkins, and Maven.
DevOps Retrofit Series
- Part I: Introducing a Case Study
- Part II: DevOps Retrofit Goals
- Part III: The DevOps Test and Dev Environment
- Part IV: Production Environment
Automation was key to transforming the legacy applications. If I were to sum up what DevOps is with one word, it would be “Automation”. Manual Processes are error prone and takes more time to accomplish than using automation. This case study will show the old legacy manual processes and describe the methods used to automate them.
It took about 2 years to complete, however features can be prioritized and rolled out fairly quickly by a very small staff (1 Developer and 2 supporting employees that spend some of their valuable time helping with project management and testing). This article documents our journey.