Its been two decades since the Millenium and building a working software product is now a finely honed process. We use a plethora of methodologies, such as Agile, Scrum, CICD, DevOps, etc. While we now can build software to a specific requirement, we are now moving towards what kind of software should we make.
In this post, we’ll take a look at how Microservices and DevOps can aid in continuous integration and continuous deployment.
A 2016 Localytics study shows that the average retention of any app post 90 days is only 20%. Users never use 45% of the features in an app. The sheer magnitude of wasted resources is enormous.
Game designers are a few steps ahead in the art of ‘hooking’ users to their products of enterprise software builders. However, the concepts are exciting and software development can use them as well.
Nir Eyal, in his book, Hooked, shows how this works. An external trigger leads to an action by the user. This action is rewarded, which leads to more investment and engagement, and subsequently, loops form that is hard to exit.
Game designer, Amy Jo Kim, has formed the Skill Building Core Loop. This loop is similar to the Hook explained earlier. An engaging activity exposes the user to the game. This activity leads to specific progress, rewards, and feedback. Once the user finds this appealing, s/he is more invested in the game leading to internal, situational and external triggers.
The difference between the two is that the pleasure derived in being invested in a game gives users a dopamine hit. However, in the Core Loop, its the excitement of learning that causes user satisfaction.
Hypothesis Driven Development
HDD is an alternative way to build software using game design principles. Here, a user creates a usable product with a UI that is relevant and intuitive and can retain a user with minimal effort. By iteratively incorporating feedback from the user, the subsequent versions promise to be just as rewarding if not more. Consequently, this continues to hook the user.
Eventually using this software becomes a verb and a habit that enmeshes with the users’ daily tasks. Continous usage creates a skilled user with peer recognition further engaging the ‘hook.’
With the advent of AI and ML, the value delivered at each iteration will be increasingly richer since the software itself becomes smarter by using data from every usage and its outcomes.
There are a few downsides as well.
New features are available only in the next release. In this day and age of software development as well releases are not very frequent. This may discourage the user from using the software in the interim. Adding and removing features is also not easy and takes too long. You may also need extensive regression testing to ensure hardwired dependencies are not affected.
While DevOps and CICD offer the ability to release software more frequently, in practice, this is hard. Enterprise applications are often monolithic with long regression testing cycles. Here continuous delivery is possible but impractical. Development and production environments are not identical and hence, do not provide uniformity. Feature toggles are not possible, and it is difficult to roll back existing features.
Containerized Microservices
The answer may lie in microservices. While continuous delivery and deployment and infrastructure-as-a-code are excellent, containerized microservices offer a better alternative. Here each feature operates in its environment, has its frontend and backend and works independently. The development and production environments are also identical using Docker containers, and hence, any transition from one to the other does not break delivery.
Integration and regression testing are also limited to one microservice and take minutes instead of hours. Along with feature toggle, canary releases and blue-green deployment, it is now practically possible to do releases as frequently as is needed. Using telemetry and analytics tools, it is now possible to get precise user feedback on this microservice.
Also listed are the tools we use on a regular basis to aid our CI/CD processes.
Conclusion
What was once a tedious and time-consuming task, has now been simplified to an extent with Microservices. Using microservices and DevOps, one can practically achieve CI/CD. With a common toolset, devs, and ops can now define common terminology to work jointly on a common problem and improve productivity.
Using microservices also aids in bringing development changes more rapidly into production. This facilitates faster development and changes in the feature set that the business requires. Watch the full webinar here,If you enjoyed reading this post, here are a few more that you may find interesting.
Here are some blogs you may enjoy
“Synerzip team is very responsive & quick to adopt new technologies. Team naturally follows best practices, does peer reviews and delivers quality output, thus exceeding client expectations.”
“Synerzip’s agile processes & daily scrums were very valuable, made communication & time zone issues work out successfully.”
“Synerzip’s flexible and responsible team grew to be an extension to the StepOne team. Typical concerns of time zone issues did not exist with Synerzip team.”
“Synerzip worked in perfect textbook Agile fashion – releasing working demos every two weeks. Though aggressive schedules, Synerzip was able to deliver a working product in 90 days, which helped Zimbra stand by their commitment to their customers.”
“Outstanding product delivery and exceptional project management, comes from DNA of Synerzip.”
“Studer product has practically taken a 180% turn from what it was, before Synerzip came in. Synerzip cost is very reasonable as compared to the work they do.”
“Synerzip makes the timezone differences work FOR the customer, enabling a positive experience for us. ‘Seeing is believing’, so we decided to give it a shot and the project was very successful.”
“The Synerzip team seamlessly integrates with our team. We started seeing results within the first sprint. And due to the team’s responsiveness, we were able to get our product to the sales cycle within 7 months.”
“Product management team from Synerzip is exceptional and has a clear understanding of Studer’s needs. Synerzip team gives consistent performance and never misses a deadline.”
“Synerzip is different because of the quality of their leadership, efficient team and clearly set methodologies. Studer gets high level of confidence from Synerzip along with significant cost advantage of almost 50%”
“Synerzip’s hiring approach and practices are worth applauding. Working with Synerzip is like
“What you see is what you get”.”
“Synerzip has dedicated experts for every area. Synerzip helped Tangoe save a lot of cost, still giving a very high quality product.”
“Synerzip gives tremendous cost advantage in terms of hiring and growing the team to be productive verses a readymade team. Synerzip is one company that delivers “co –development” to the core!”
“Synerzip is a great company to work with. Good leadership and a warm, welcoming attitude of the team are additional plus points.”
“Our relationship with Synerzip is very collaborative, and they are our true partners as our values match with theirs.”
“Synerzip has proven to be a great software product co-development partner. It is a leader because of its great culture, its history, and its employee retention policies. ExamSoft’s clients are happy with the product, and that’s how ExamSoft measures that all is going well.”
“They possess a great technical acumen with a burning desire to solve problems. The team always takes the initiative and ownership in all the processes they follow. Synerzip has played a vital role in our scaling up and was a perfect partner in cost, efficiency, and schedules.”
“As we are a startup, things change on a weekly basis, but Synerzip team has been flexible in adapting the same”
“Synerzip team has been very proactive in building the best quality software, bringing in best practices, and cutting edge innovation for our company.”
“We’ve been working for more than six years with Synerzip and its one of the better, if not the best, experience I’ve had working with an outsourcing company.”
“My experience with Synerzip is that they have the talent. You throw a problem at them, and someone from that team helps to solve the issue.”
“The breadth and depth of technical abilities that Synerzip brings on the table and the UX work done by them for this project exceeded my expectations!”
“Synerzip UX designers very closely represent their counterparts in the US in terms of their practice, how they tackle problems, and how they evangelize the value of UX.”
“Synerzip team understood the requirements well and documented them to make sure they understood them rightly.”
“Synerzip is definitely not a typical offshore company. Synerzip team is incredibly communicative, agile, and delivers on its commitments.”
“Working with Synerzip helped us accelerate our roadmap in ways we never thought possible!”
“While working with Synerzip, I get a feeling of working with a huge community of resources, who can jump in with the skills as needed.”
