1. Lack of a Standard Definition for DevOps Most people are still not aware of the actual meaning of DevOps, let alone the motto behind it, or for that matter, the benefits of using it. In addition, some tend to believe in the notion that DevOps overrules other existing methodologies like Scrum and Kanban that are practiced in most industries. This is not so. The fact is that DevOps helps to improve the execution of these existing methodologies. Hence, lack of proper understanding can often make implementation of new methodologies risky. It gives rise to new problems that could affect the implementation of a stable process throughout the organization.
2. Dearth of Vision Without a proper definition of the problem or solution, it is very difficult to have a vision. Thus, when analysts get used to a process, they start following a certain path specific to managing things. Despite that, at some point in time, they too are stuck in a circle. It becomes very difficult to break this ambiguous circle, be more receptive to current scenarios, and discover newer methods for betterment – all at the same time! Without a proper plan, it is impossible to achieve a stable and profitable output. Lack of vision makes it challenging for project owners to create a clear-cut plan when it comes to deciding an estimate, milestones, and deliverables, to name a few. Analysts often find it risky because there are only a handful of people who have expertise in this domain, compared to the number of tools that are available in the market. This could often give rise to confusion when it comes to proper implementation, ultimately leading to an exponential increase in the risk factor.
3. Shortage of Tool Knowledge DevOps has introduced the principles of continuous deployment, continuous testing, and collaborative reporting. However, since most people prefer to continue work with legacy tools, getting accustomed to the functionalities of the latest tools is often a difficult job, especially when it comes to getting a grip on the changes made to the architecture based on cloud and on-premises during the process. A shortage of tool knowledge often leads organizations into making faulty choices of tools that would best align with their technical vision.
4. Choice of Tools There are plenty of tools available on the market. However, it becomes difficult to choose a tool when we lack the proper knowledge about the technology behind it. All these make the idea of implementation of a DevOps scenario extremely difficult.
5. Lack of Tool Integration Continuous integration is one of the pillars of DevOps methodology. In order to make Build, Deploy, and Test work together in a continuous form, we need the tools to be properly integrated. However, the crux of the matter is how to get the tools integrated. That is because integrating tools belonging to various domains on one common platform is a big challenge.
6. Cultural Challenges The biggest challenge here is the disposal of legacy methods and the adaptation of new ones. Of course, one can always prefer to continue following the conventional methodologies as long as the outcome is good at the end of the day. On the contrary, if the outcome is poor, or for that matter, if you realize that your job demands many manual interventions, then it would be best to realize that this could hamper the overall rate of productivity and lead to an adverse effect in the long run.
7. Isolated Teams Development and Operations have their own challenges. While developers are constantly writing pieces of code in order to build a system, testers perform a thorough analysis to ensure product stability before the final delivery to the customer. You can see there lies a big gap between teams. Both Dev and Ops work in silos, leading to a lack of transparency and poor teamwork.
8. Risk Analysis We know how difficult it is to disrupt age-old methodologies and replace them with new ones. When it comes to risk analysis, business analysts design their dashboards by scaling hundreds of reports. This is done based on certain calculations. Most of the time, it is easy to start but tough to scale. That is, after putting things into action, workers often face the trouble of trying to keep the pace steady. Thus, adopting a new methodology involves risks to a great extent.
9. Scarcity of SMEs DevOps is a methodology that is fresh in the market. Hence, it is difficult to find members who have adequate expertise in this field. Due to this fact, most of the challenges are intimidating for companies following a streamlined set of guidelines. In addition, the absence of a strong DevOps development team at the center or lack of pre-defined KPIs can often make conditions miserable for employees.
10. Database implementation with application
Implementing database changes in the DevOps system involves a great challenge.
The challenge faced while establishing synchronization between the change of databases and the application.
The deployment in the database should be connected to a regulated version to associate the development changes in the database with the deployment.
11. Switching from Legacy Infrastructure to Microservices: In order to reduce stability issues, organisations now use infrastructure as code along with microservices for quicker development along with sharp innovations. Moreover, organisations need to update their hardware and software systems according to the latest trends on a regular basis, so that new systems can co-exist with the existing systems.
12. Test Automation Test Automation holds equal importance as CI/CD deployments. It has been commonly observed that companies tend to neglect test automation and focus more on CI/CD deployments. For DevOps to be a success, continuous testing acts as a key.
13. App complexity application architecture complexity and changes should be based on on-premises, cloud, and containers early on in the process.
14. Executive support Lack of knowledge executives at your company about the benefits of DevOps, in order to gain resource and budget support. 15. Process-oriented Challenges For the kind of people who are used to following rules blindly, it might be pretty challenging for them to adopt DevOps since there is no fixed framework which will assign the particular employee on how he/she should progress with a project to achieve the desired goal.
16. Security mishaps When we try to integrate security into the CI/CD pipeline, security testing consumes a lot of time which affects the pace of DevOps process. Besides, every security tool running in applications consists of individual dashboard making it difficult for the interfaces to integrate. Also, like false negatives occurring in the pipeline, false positives occur due to inadequate knowledge and understanding of language during integration. This eventually slows down the process. Continuous monitoring and focused effort from the security team helps in eradicating non-compliance and security issues