How Automating Deployments Frees Developers to Focus on Innovation

As developers, we spend countless hours on the software development process, testing, debugging, and fine-tuning applications. While we weather the storm, the app deployment process remains a painful, time consuming, and manual task, characterized by unexpected hiccups.

Deploying applications manually always increases the risks of human error and slows time-to-market. And since it's incredibly slow, it can tie you down and have a toll on your creativity and productivity. Fortunately, there’s a better way of doing things; automated deployments.

Automating your app deployments brings much needed relief, allowing you to focus more on innovation. Automated deployment tools make it easier to identify common bugs and errors in your project—and enhance overall code quality.

Read on to discover different challenges that come with manual deployments and how embracing automated deployments helps you resolve them.

The Pain Points of Manual Deployments

While manual deployments can be successful, they are prone to numerous challenges that are not only frustrating but also slow down project progress. If you’ve deployed your apps manually before, chances are you’ve experienced some of these issues. Time-consuming and error-prone processes. Manual deployments require a great deal of time to get right. Ensuring you have the required files, settings, and configurations needs a keen eye and attention to detail. You may also experience challenges identifying and resolving errors in the deployment process. Risk of human error and inconsistencies. As developers, we can make mistakes at different stages of the software development cycle. And that’s okay. But when it comes to software deployment, mistakes can have serious consequences. For example, manual deployment processes can introduce security vulnerabilities and performance issues to an application. When such issues make it to production, they impact the user experience negatively. Delayed time-to-market. Since manual deployments take more time, they can delay you from delivering new features to customers quickly. This could be frustrating, especially if you’re trying to push urgent fixes to a live application. Reduced developer morale and productivity. After investing significant time and effort into developing an application, the daunting task of manual deployment can significantly impact developer morale and productivity. The risk of overlooking critical steps in the manual process can compromise application performance and lead to further frustrations. ##Benefits of Automated Deployments If you wish to speed up your development process, embracing automated deployments is the way to go. This can help minimize error-prone processes, reduce time to market, and potentially boost your productivity. We discuss other benefits you stand to gain from automated deployments. Increased efficiency and speed. Automating deployment can help you deliver updates and new features to customers quickly. If you’re in a competitive market space, this could give you an edge over other rivals. By automating common tasks like compilation and packaging, developers can achieve more in less time and focus more on creative work. Plus, automated deployments are capable of streamlining the entire software development process—spanning from design to production—removing bottlenecks and other issues.. Reduced risk of errors and downtime. Automating routine tasks can minimize errors and facilitate more consistency in your workplace. Automated deployments also improve reliability by ensuring all steps are followed during software production. Plus, embracing automation can help identify potential issues in your project early before it reaches end users. Improved code quality and consistency. While we may be experts in what we do, there are some issues that may go unnoticed during software development. In such cases, automated deployments can ensure that we are following recommended coding practices and conventions, resulting in maintainable and quality work. Plus, automated deployments facilitate consistent environments with reduced risks. Enhanced collaboration and teamwork. Automated deployments can foster enhanced collaboration and teamwork within software development teams. By providing a shared view of the production pipeline, these tools facilitate better communication and coordination among team members. Everyone can track the progress of changes, ensuring transparency and accountability. Greater developer satisfaction and productivity. Automated deployments can help eliminate stress, frustrations, and challenges that arise during production. By delegating routine tasks, developers can focus on implementing key features—thereby enhancing their overall productivity. ##How Automation Works Automation deployment entails using different software tools and frameworks to move code changes, updates, and new features to a production environment. In doing so, automation deployment drastically reduces the amount of manual effort required to launch an application, making it a must-know process for software developers. The automated deployment pipeline consists of processes like continuous integration, continuous delivery, and deployment automation tools and software. Continuous integration and delivery efforts enable teams to release new features, merge changes, and make updates to software products more frequently and easily. These practices also encourage automated tests, which result in high quality and reliable products. Deployment automation tools like Gitlab, Jenkins, and Travis provide tools for testing, building, and deploying code. Typically, the software deployment process progresses as follows. Code commits and testing. The deployment process starts with developers pushing code commits. The automation tool then runs tests and reports the results. Packaging and building. Automation tools can package the application into the formats like Docker image, JAR, APK and more, ready for distribution. Deployment to staging environment. The automation tool is then used to deploy the application to a setting environment where developers can gauge its performance. Deployment to production environment. Developers can use test results to push code changes and feature updates before pushing the final product to production. ##Best Practices for Successful Automation Looking to kickstart your automation journey, here are best practices to follow for successful deployments.

Adopt an incremental approach. Begin by automating a few processes like testing and scale as you become more familiar with the deployment process. Select the right tools. While numerous automation deployment tools exist, they don’t fit in all use cases. Consider factors like your project requirements, production environment, budget, and technical expertise to find the right automation deployment tools. Focus on security and compliance. Ensure that your automation deployment process conforms to established security policies and standards. Assess how different tools handle sensitive data and select the most secure one. Invest in training. While automated deployment tools bring many benefits in your workflow, you must know how to use them effectively to harness their full capabilities. Consider going through official documentation and attending online classes and workshops to gather knowledge on using the tool. ##Automate your App Deployments with CloudZilla From increasing efficiency and speed to boosting one’s productivity, automating app deployments can bring numerous benefits to your workflow. You will be able to push products faster to markets and even have more time to focus on innovation. If you’re ready to automate your app deployments, consider Cloudzilla. By bringing different cloud providers under one network, CloudZilla allows you to instantly deploy your app from the repository or migrate to different vendors with ease and at a low cost. Avoid deployment-related stress by signing up today!