The benefits of DevOps are not limited to large enterprises. For startups, DevOps can offer the agility you need to keep responding and adapting to market demands, while maintaining the quality users now expect.Why DevOps Matters for StartupsAs a startup, youre probably feeling the pressure to get your product or service to market quickly, but also feeling the pinch from your budget and team size. What you need is a way to deliver your software to users faster, without dramatically increasing headcount or reducing the quality. Thats where DevOps can help.The DevOps methodology is a set of culture, processes, and tools designed to help software organizations deliver faster while maintaining quality and operational stability for users.DevOps represents a move away from the traditional separation between development (responsible for building new features) and operations (responsible for releasing new versions and addressing problems in production).Instead of these two groups being in tension with one another, DevOps helps development and operations teams work together more effectively. You can read more about the origins of DevOps in our detailed guide, but the key elements are:Building a culture of collaboration, communication, and shared responsibility for delivering value to users.Using tools to automate and thereby speed up manual processes, including build, test and deployment.Using continuous feedback to enable continuous improvement of your product or service, and of the processes you use to deliver them.How DevOps accelerates startup growthDevOps is a methodology that aims to optimize the software development and delivery process to support your business goals. For startups, that can be the difference between having a great idea but failing to execute, and building an efficient, sustainable business that can bring your innovation to market.Adopting DevOps comes with a host of benefits. For startups in particular, DevOps can help you with the following.Improve productivityAutomating the many steps involved in building, testing and deploying software saves considerable time, and frees up developers, testers and operations staff to focus on tasks that require more creativity.Deliver fasterHaving an automated pipeline for build, test, and deployment significantly speeds up your release process, meaning a shorter time to market.CI/CD processTest and refine your ideasAs you streamline your process it becomes easier to work in smaller chunks and ship new features incrementally. In turn, that means you can collect feedback from real-world usage and validate your ideas or adjust course as needed.Ensure qualitySystematically checking every code change with automated tests helps you catch bugs early. In the same vein, scripting your deployment process ensures consistency, and significantly reduces the likelihood of mistakes. The result is a better experience for your users, and a better reputation for your business. Read also: How to Integrate Qodana Into TeamCityAttract the best talentDevOps has been around long enough for many in the software industry to consider it the norm. Given the choice, many developers will prefer to join a team that has embraced automation and rapid feedback.Avoid technical debtWhen you embrace DevOps early on, you save yourself from accruing unnecessary technical debt around manual build, test and deployment tasks.Core DevOps principles to start withAs a methodology for developing and delivering software, DevOps is grounded in a few key principles.CollaborationThe name DevOps a combination of Development and Operations- emphasizes the need for collaboration between these functions in pursuit of a common business goal. Of course, other disciplines, like security, design, or QA, should also be part of that collaborative effort.In a startup, you may have a smaller group of people covering multiple functions, making communication easier. As you scale, youll need to work to maintain a culture of knowledge sharing and open collaboration.Continuous feedback and improvementRather than a linear process in which the development team write the code and then hand it over to operations to release and maintain it, DevOps describes a cyclical workflow: code changes are planned and made; software is built, tested and deployed; the product or service is used and monitored; that data is used to plan further code changes. Along the way, there are many shorter feedback loops that make it easier to fix things early on.This whole approach is referred to as shift left and creates a virtuous circle of continuous improvement. This DevOps way of working is ideal when youre developing a new product as it helps you to keep testing, learning, and refining.Automation and CI/CDAutomating as much as possible is a fundamental part of DevOps. Automating the build, test and deployment process is what enables the short, rapid, feedback loops that are required for continuous improvement. Linking these steps together creates a CI/CD pipeline an automated process that can take your code all the way from commit to release. Read also: Automated Testing for CI/CDAs a startup with few existing processes, you can choose to embrace automation from the outset. However, be careful not to overengineer your processes automation is the means, rather than the end goal.Building a Scalable CI/CD Pipeline for StartupsIf youre adopting DevOps as a startup, creating a CI/CD pipeline is something youll want to prioritize. Continuous integration (CI) is the practice of building and testing your codebase automatically typically each time changes are added to version control. Continuous delivery or continuous deployment refer to deploying your software automatically to pre-production environments and eventually to production.Using an automated CI/CD pipeline to build, test, and deploy each code change is the mechanism that unlocks rapid feedback, higher code quality, and more frequent releases. In turn, this facilitates cycles of continuous feedback and improvement.Although it can be tempting to try to build a complete pipeline immediately, its more effective to start small and build your pipeline incrementally. Doing so gives you more scope to experiment and collect feedback so you can refine each part before you start chaining the steps together into an end-to-end process. Good starting points for startups wanting to build automated, scalable CI/CD pipelines include:Automated tests. The sooner you start writing automated tests, the better, as the larger your codebase when you start the longer it will take to achieve good test coverage. Automated tests are vital for providing developers with rapid feedback on their latest code changes and for releasing changes more frequently.Build automation. Reducing the number of manual tasks involved in building your software is essential if you want to be able to test and release changes frequently. If the build process involves multiple steps, start with whichever is most time-consuming or error prone. You can then extend the logic as time and resources allow.Infrastructure as code. IaC is the practice of using scripts to define your infrastructure, rather than configuring your environments manually. Doing so not only saves time but also ensures your testing and pre-production environments are recreated consistently for every pipeline run.One-click releases. Although releasing your software to production is the final step in the pipeline, scripting this step early on can save significant time in the long run. It also means that if a critical issue does arise in production, you can release a new version (or revert to a previous version) quickly and with far less risk of mistakes being made in the process.Key DevOps Challenges Early-Stage Teams FaceStartups adopting DevOps often have an advantage over larger organizations: culture and processes tend to be less entrenched, and you probably dont need to break down existing silos between development and operations.Nevertheless, there are other challenges that can impede your DevOps journey as a startup:Over-engineering the processA CI/CD platform is a great way to automate your build, test and deployment cycles. Faced with so much flexibility, it can be tempting to create a whole suite of pipelines to manage a range of different use cases. But doing so runs the risk of overcomplicating your workflows and making them difficult to understand. Rather than trying to address every possible use case, start by automating just one or two of your most common workflows and build up from there.Not addressing feedbackRapid and regular feedback is a vital part of DevOps, and encompasses everything from the results of an automated build or test process, to the number of customers making use of a new feature.However, its not enough just to make that feedback available. A complete feedback loop requires the feedback to be addressed. That could mean fixing a bug, adding another automated test, tweaking a script, or adding another item to the product backlog for prioritization.DevOps tools that provide notifications and dashboards play a part in ensuring feedback is not missed. These need to be combined with a culture of shared responsibility, in which everyone is invested in making a better product or service for your users.Neglecting security best practicesWhen youre laser-focused on getting your innovation to market before someone else lands on the same idea, its easy to forget about securing your software from cyberthreats. However, its an oversight that can cost you dearly. Users expect their data to be stored securely, and the regulatory landscape in many jurisdictions backs that up with the threat of hefty fines.Fortunately, implementing security best practices doesnt have to be an arduous task. Incorporating automated security testing such as SAST and DAST into a CI/CD pipeline is a good way to ensure best practices are followed.Forgetting to monitor productionThe focus on build, test and deployment can cause teams to lose track of the longest feedback loop: feedback from production. Collecting key metrics and monitoring your software in production is an essential part of maintaining software quality. While automated tests will reduce the number of bugs that make it to production, you wont be able to test every eventuality. Being proactive in the way you monitor such as using metrics to detect issues before theyre reported by users will also improve your users experience. Read also: CI/CD Observability with TeamCity Server MetricsKey DevOps challenges early-stage teams faceStartups adopting DevOps often have an advantage over larger organizations: culture and processes tend to be less entrenched, and you probably dont need to break down existing silos between development and operations.Nevertheless, there are other challenges that can impede your DevOps journey as a startup:Over-engineering the process A CI/CD platform is a great way to automate your build, test and deployment cycles. Faced with so much flexibility, it can be tempting to create a whole suite of pipelines to manage a range of different use cases. But doing so runs the risk of overcomplicating your workflows and making them difficult to understand. Rather than trying to address every possible use case, start by automating just one or two of your most common workflows and build up from there.Not addressing feedbackRapid and regular feedback is a vital part of DevOps, and encompasses everything from the results of an automated build or test process, to the number of customers making use of a new feature.However, its not enough just to make that feedback available. A complete feedback loop requires the feedback to be addressed. That could mean fixing a bug, adding another automated test, tweaking a script, or adding another item to the product backlog for prioritization.DevOps tools that provide notifications and dashboards play a part in ensuring feedback is not missed. These need to be combined with a culture of shared responsibility, in which everyone is invested in making a better product or service for your users.Neglecting security best practicesWhen youre laser-focused on getting your innovation to market before someone else lands on the same idea, its easy to forget about securing your software from cyberthreats. However, its an oversight that can cost you dearly. Users expect their data to be stored securely, and the regulatory landscape in many jurisdictions backs that up with the threat of hefty fines.Fortunately, implementing security best practices doesnt have to be an arduous task. Incorporating automated security testing such as SAST and DAST into a CI/CD pipeline is a good way to ensure best practices are followed.Forgetting to monitor productionThe focus on build, test and deployment can cause teams to lose track of the longest feedback loop: feedback from production. Collecting key metrics and monitoring your software in production is an essential part of maintaining software quality. While automated tests will reduce the number of bugs that make it to production, you wont be able to test every eventuality. Being proactive in the way you monitor such as using metrics to detect issues before theyre reported by users will also improve your users experience.Losing sight of business goalsLast but by no means least, its easy to fall into the trap of treating DevOps as a goal in itself, when really its the means to an end and should support your business goals. As you build your CI/CD pipelines and develop your processes, consider your current business priorities perhaps thats collecting user feedback or preparing to scale for a larger customer base.Focus your efforts on using DevOps to support those goals. When the business priorities change, you can keep your existing processes such as the rapid feedback loops or the infrastructure as code and then build more on top of them to address the current goals.Comparison table: DevOps vs. traditional workflowAspectTraditional workflowDevOps workflowDevelopment and operationsSeparate teams with siloed responsibilitiesIntegrated teams with shared responsibilitiesWorkflow typeLinear and sequentialIterative and continuousRelease frequencyInfrequent (monthly/quarterly)Frequent (daily/hourly)Feedback loopsDelayed; post-releaseContinuous; throughout the lifecycleTestingPerformed after developmentContinuous testing throughout the pipelineAutomationManual processes for build, test, deployAutomated CI/CD pipelinesCollaborationLimited communication between dev and opsHigh collaboration, often cross-functional teamsInfrastructureManually provisionedInfrastructure as Code (IaC), cloud-native toolsMonitoringReactive, after issues ariseProactive, with real-time monitoring and alertingDeploymentRisky, big-bang styleIncremental, low-risk deploymentsRollback/RecoveryManual and slowFast, automated rollback strategiesCultural focusProcess complianceContinuous improvement, experimentation, learningHow TeamCity supports scalable DevOps for startupsTeamCity is a CI/CD platform designed for DevOps teams of any size. As a DevOps tool for startups, TeamCity gives you the freedom to design pipelines that support your existing workflows and evolve them as your needs change.For those new to CI/CD, the visual pipeline editor makes it easy to get started while generating your pipeline configuration as code to ensure consistency and reusability. When youre ready to add more pipelines, reusable build configurations accelerate the process further.If, like many startups, you prefer to minimize on-site infrastructure, TeamCitys cloud options give you the freedom to run jobs off-site with cloud-hosted build agents, host your own build server in the cloud, or go for a cloud DevOps tool with TeamCity Pipelines.Of course, identifying the best technology stack for your needs when youre still refining your product or service is a gamble. With TeamCity, youll get support for all major version control systems and operating systems, a long list of programming languages and testing frameworks, and integrations with dozens of ancillary tools, ensuring your CI/CD process can evolve with you. Sign up for a free trial