Great software teams like Netflix and Amazon don’t just build apps. They release hundreds of updates in a day, for millions of users to make their experience smooth.
But how?
By sticking to proven DevOps practices.
DevOps practices are techniques that help teams work together to deliver applications faster, more reliably, and with higher quality.
In fact, research shows that teams using DevOps practices deploy code 30 times more, with 50% fewer errors.
What are DevOps Practices?
DevOps practices are common habits or rules that teams follow to build and deliver software smoothly. In simple words, it’s a set of ‘good routines’ that make life easier for developers and operations people.
The goal is to create a smooth flow where plans turn into working software as per user needs.
11 DevOps Practices That Matter Most
1. Agile Project Management
A very well-known practice that almost everyone follows is ‘Agile project management’. Agile is a way of managing projects that helps software teams to deliver better work and faster than before.
It’s built on four main ideas:
- People and teamwork
- Working software
- Customer input
- Adapting to change matters
However, agile gets even stronger when combined with DevOps. This mix of Agile + DevOps means faster delivery, smarter updates, and features that actually match what customers want.
2. Support a collaborative culture
To make DevOps work, the first thing to focus on is building a collaborative culture for your team. As per the survey, teams having trust on each other and showing empathy, make DevOps work more successfully.
Tools that help with collaboration are: Infrastructure as code (Iac), and Spacelift. With Spacelift, you can bring in security and compliance teams to help build, approve, and manage workflows and policies together.
3. Adopt Continuous integration & Continuous delivery
This practice in simple words, states that developers don’t wait for weeks or months to merge their work. Instead by using Continuous Integration, they add small code changes regularly into the main project. This way errors are caught early and improve code quality.
And after the code is incorporated, it must be deployed. Continuous Delivery makes sure that all the changes are always prepared to be launched. This simplifies deployment and provides the developer with an easy, automated method of deploying code to production.
4. Automate everything you can
This practice is about setting up automated testing in your CI/CD pipelines. Instead of letting people test code manually, automated tests run every time a small change is made.
By using different types of tests, such as unit tests, integration tests, end-to-end tests, load tests, and smoke tests, you can catch bugs early.
5. Adopt microservices and modular design
This practice is about adopting microservices architecture. Which states that you don’t need to build a large application. Instead ,split the system into small, independent services that can be developed, tested, and deployed separately.
By doing this, you can easily add new features quickly, scale the system, and maintain it. Hence, makes the system more reliable.
6. Use infrastructure as code
The name ‘infrastructure as code’ defines that it is about managing and setting up infrastructure by using code and not traditionally. This practice uses automation, continuous delivery, and version control to keep infrastructure consistent.
If something goes wrong, the infrastructure can be recreated, since code is stored. This also makes your work easier during the time of fixing and finding the problem.
7. Shift left with CI/CD
This approach by name is very confusing but equally useful. Shifting left means testing early. In short, these practices state that instead of waiting for a separate QA team, developers run tests while writing code, so that the problems can be fixed immediately.
It works best with CI and CD, which help in making integration and deployment of the code easier and faster.
8. Focus on observability:
By the name of the practice, ‘focus on observability’ means keeping a close eye on your system. It can be done by monitoring, logging, and tracing, the team can see how the applications and infrastructure are performing.
By following this approach, you can spot and fix the problems quickly and motivate your team to continuously improve the system.
9. Build with the right tools
This practice states that your team should use the best tools for each step in the DevOps process. By doing so, they can work faster, and deliver better software.
Additionally, you can explore which tools fit each phase of the DevOps lifecycle to make your workflow smoother.
10. Gather ongoing feedback
Continuous feedback is really important in devOps, which is being overlooked. As it helps the team improve constantly and work smarter.
This approach involves collecting feedback regularly at every stage. Stages such as planning, coding, testing, deployment, and monitoring. Additionally, it also encourages collaboration between teams, resulting in a smoother workflow.
11. Prioritize security
This approach is about prioritizing security from the beginning and not only in the end step. DevOps makes sure that security is taken care of from the beginning, which also includes design and CI/CD pipelines.
You can use the Spacelift tool to enable automated code reviews that will make your system safe and reliable.
Closure
Now it’s time to stop coding in a mess and start coding with clarity.
Because in 2026, you can’t compromise with speed and stability. That’s where DevOps practices will help you outshine in front of your competitors.
Every user expects apps that work flawlessly, just like Netflix and Amazon works every single day. So, follow the above-mentioned DevOps practices to make your software faster, safer, and smoother.
