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DevOps Pillars: The Essential Strategies That Strengthen The Development Process

DevOps Pillars: The Essential Strategies That Strengthen The Development Process

DevOps Pillars: The Essential Strategies That Strengthen The Development Process

Software Development (Dev) and information technology operations (Ops) have drawn together DevOps, helping the entire software development process from designs to production support. DevOps methodologies help fasten the development process, QA, and deployment where the companies can launch their products faster to the market. 

A shorter development cycle, environment stabilization, reduced defects, and increased release velocity are some of the key benefits of using DevOps. This article briefly discusses the solid pillars of DevOps that help to accelerate businesses and software companies to be efficient and agile, creating applications of DevOps speed and scale.

Leadership and Planning

Leaders can empower organizations with a long-term vision and innovative ideas while stimulating the team with inspirational communication and encouragement. They can also identify the unique skills of individuals and assign tasks accordingly. Therefore, it is essential to have a great lead in bringing the best out of the developer team.

Planning is another major component that can strengthen the entire DevOps process. Apart from the standard project planning, it is crucial to establish a strong collaboration between the business and the team. Once the KPIs are decided, it is essential to implement them around software architectures, languages and other frameworks.

Collaboration

A culture enriched with joint effort enables multi-functional engagements and shared responsibilities avoiding silos between Dev, Ops, and QA. Collaborating tools such as Slack, Yammer, and Chanty help the teams to communicate and cooperate between departments. In addition, the collaborative culture enables the teams to monitor the established Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and ensure each phase runs smoothly throughout the process.

Tools and Automation

Integrating a tool system to collaborate across development helps provide seamless operations. Capture requests and feedback, integrate survey platforms, provide customer and real-time feedback, and spot the gaps and issues among teams are some significant benefits you can gain by integrating a tool system.

Sourcing and Microservices

It is essential to develop heterogeneous applications that include various languages, technologies, and other components. This helps to develop products quickly with higher flexibility as the industry is fast moving and needs to have adaptations with the latest technology. Moreover, many software companies use open-source packages due to several reasons, such as easy customization, lower costs, enhanced developer productivity etc.

Microservices are another aspect that software companies use over monolithic architecture. It can break down massive software projects into independent modules and define specific tasks to communicate through simple APIs. Furthermore, it can rectify errors independently and deploy them quickly without affecting the entire application. Overall, microservices result in increased agility, scalability, and reliability.

Improvements, Integrations, and Testing

To ensure continuous integration, software version management (SVM) is used to manage all source code changes and versions of code image changes used by the build process. Typically, these are managed in a single trunk or integration branch of the code. The system is engineered in a way where the resources are always sufficient to execute a build. Continuous integration practices ensure resources for a build are available on-demand and are fast enough to complete incremental builds in less than an hour.

The team works collaboratively for continuous testing and solves defects quickly and effectively, eliminating long delays. Software teams use new unit tests, functional regression, release regression, release performance, blue/green testing methods, and A/B tests depending on the specific software change and predefined criteria.

Continuous Monitoring and Security

To identify highest-priority problems, loggin and proactive systems are used by DevOps teams. They produce snapshots and end results of each metric. KPIs are also automatically gathered and calculated here. These are available to any team member who subscribes to them, and these practices help identify the problems quickly and concentrate on areas that need improvement.

Every organization embraces security monitoring practices and security assurance automation. The security platforms typically functioned via APIs with proven version control practices and tools. The codes and keys are accessible to trusted users only with verified credentials to maintain high-security practices.

Distributing, Delivery, and Deployment

Delivery is another pillar in the DevOps pipeline where deliverable packages with the sufficient configuration and test data are packaged and prepared for deployment. Here, configuration management tools are used to manage information and these measurements are achieved, and deliverables will be pushed to the deployment. Deployment is determined according to predetermined metrics and usually takes less than a day to process.

Apart from the traditional placement of applications in Appstore/Playstore, the software can be distributed and delivered in other ways to bring more value to the business. Open source, API access, and pushing software to edge deployments are some of the few conventions where companies can be a part of the external developer ecosystem and generate new revenue.

DevOps pillars can strongly affect the entire software development process, benefiting with excellent outputs. At Fidenz, we ensure to follow these critical pillars of DevOps to build successful software products. The practices can give a comprehensive view of how to build a DevOps strategy for your business with shorter iterations, enhanced functions, and reduced risks.

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Benefits of Mobile Applications for the Healthcare Industry

Benefits of Mobile Applications for the Healthcare Industry

The long hours in queues waiting to get healthcare needs are now over with the revolutionized web and mobile solutions provided in the health industry. The need for online medicare solutions has been gradually increased with the Covid-19 pandemic, where people can safely consult their doctors without getting exposed to the general public.

The increasing number of healthcare applications for devices like smartphones, tablets, and other wearable devices has enabled people to use them and take care of their health in an advanced and effective manner. These applications often include health management, healthy living and wellness, clinical reference, and diagnostic applications.

Significance of eHealth Solutions

According to the World Health Organization, digital health solutions can upscale people worldwide to achieve a higher standard of health and protect well-being. The organization has implemented a three-tier approach to digital health delivery in terms of policymakers, practitioners, and populations.

These seamless and secure technologies can provide effective clinical and public health solutions to the public while accelerating the achievement of the health and well-being related sustainable development growth (SGDs)

Advantages Of Using The Mobile Application In The Healthcare Industry

Seamless Data Flow

Healthcare domains usually consist of complex network web. Apart from the data flow between patients and healthcare personnel, it also needs to be administrated for accounting purposes. Mobile applications can cut off this complex network web allowing the data to move efficiently and faster. It further helps in eliminating extensive paperwork and not to worry about physical document misplacement and damages.

Real-time And Easy Communication Methods

The communication between each party is more streamlined to connect with each other from any place. It helps people in remote areas to get in touch with their doctors without the need for travel. The eHealth modes constitute a significant boom for disabled and older people with chronic conditions who need constant support.

Reduced Risks Of Diagnosis Errors

Numerous types of clinical resources are required to make accurate diagnostic decisions. Mobile health applications can help medical professionals to reference drug guides, medical calculators, clinical guidelines, and other required references. The all-inclusive details in one application can enhance disease diagnosis and treatment decisions with high accuracy.

Encourages A Healthy Lifestyle

Healthcare apps can track and monitor the irregularities in an individual’s health and help them become conscious and motivated to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Digital accessories such as smartwatches, fitness, and health tracking apps enable people to constantly monitor their diet, weight, heart rate, pressure, stress levels, etc., and set goals to achieve fitness and health plans.

The increased leverage in eHealth and mobile application development outlines the need of having custom-made mobile applications catering to your customers. Fidenz technologies has the skills and expertise to make your idea a reality and develop a mobile application that matches your requirements. We also have hands-on experience in developing applications while complying with industry standards like HIPAA (Health Insurance Probability And Accountability Act) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

Fidenz’s all-inclusive software solutions can benefit every user, such as doctors, patients, medical staff, and other administrators. If you are looking forward to making the right decision in developing a healthcare app that can outsmart the competition, contact our team of engineers for further consultation.

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Importance of Human-Computer Interactions

Importance of Human-Computer Interactions

The interaction of humans and computers has rapidly increased over time, where most of the day is spent in front of a computer, and the work needs to be done with technological assistance. Apart from desktop work we further use mobiles, tablets, and other digital devices to do our routine work. The need has highlighted the significance of creating an interface that lets people interact in novel ways and design systems to enhance the everyday work activities for a broad group of people with different skill levels. 

What is Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)?

HCI is the science of identifying the interface between people and machines and designing an interface or a computer technology to match those uses. The flow of information between humans and computers can be visual or audio-based. It can also consist of other aspects such as task environment, machine environment, input or output flow, feedback, or a fit to accomplish a task.

HCI can be disciplined in the fields of computer science, behavioral science, design, media, and other areas of studies. It involves identifying the interaction between humans and computers and studying the extent to which computers are developed and designed to have successful interactions. 

The multidisciplinary nature of HCI has given it another set of terms, such as human-machine interaction (HMI), computer-human interaction (CHI), and man-machine interaction (MMI). These terminologies have been used in many cases to describe and analyze the uses and goals of HCI in different situations. This further highlights that HCI does not limit to computers, and is inclusive of mobile devices, televisions, vehicles, robotics, surveillance systems, traffic controls, etc.

Main Components of HCI

Poorly designed HCI can cause problems and end up not providing the expected outcome. Hence, it is essential to look into several key factors when developing an HCI system.

Generally, HCI consist of three components, They are;

User – An individual or a group that comes from different conceptions and abilities in learning skills. This further involves cultural and national differences.

Computer – From a desktop to large-scale computer systems, and VCRs to mobile phones can be considered to be equivalent to the term “computer.”

Interaction – With the differences between humans and machines, HCI involves getting a successful interaction with realistic and feasible functions.


Goals And Best Practices

With the ultimate goal of developing usable, safe, and functional systems with conceptual frameworks, developers attempt to implement HCI systems. The theme further involves understanding the factors that put people first and determining how people use technology and develop tools and techniques to deliver efficient, effective, safe systems.

During the development process, researchers may consider existing socio-cultural practices and values or align computer interfaces with a mental model that humans have of their activities. The use of new design methodologies, experimenting with new devices, developing models and theories of interaction,  exploring new interaction paradigms, and prototyping new software and hardware systems are some other practices taken into account when developing an HCI system.

Here are some of the best practices that are used during the development of the HCI system.

  • Focusing early on tasks and users to determine the appropriate users
  • Empirical measurement with quantitative usability
  • Creating an iterative design until a sensible, user-friendly interface is created
  • Use of multiple resources
  • Replacing memory with visual interpretation
  • Reducing similar features and highlighting dissimilar ones

These factors enable researchers and developers to create more usable and enhanced HCI systems and develop task-based computer technologies.

A good interface can make the work easy for users and get work done more effectively. Implementing HCI systems that are matched to a specific requirement can upscale the speed and produce more successful, safe, useful, and functional outputs delivering better technological solutions to the future world.