3 Types of People that should consider working with an automated Deployment Tool

"But I only need to do this once, really, automating things doesn't pay off." That's a phrase often heard in IT, but rarely true. Many things that developers and sysadmins expect to be doing only once become regular tasks, in software development as well as in DevOps. Especially when it comes to building, testing and deploying code, the above statement is outright wrong. "Release early, release often" is a fundamental concept of agile software development, and there is no agility without automation. Automation is also the primary goal of DevOps: It's all about building and delivering new products faster (than your competitors). 

So, if you ask yourself "is this for me?" or "will automation make my work life easier?", then maybe this blog post can answer those questions. Let's have a look at three types of people that should consider working with an automated deployment tool.

The Developer

It doesn't matter if you're a freelancer or employed by a company – as a developer you're mostly responsible for writing code. Your strength is your creativity, your way of thinking, combined with your expertise in scripting or programming languages. Your customers expect you to use that strength to develop new applications or shiny new features for existing apps.

Today, most developers not only think about the design and the actual implementation, they're also involved in operational tasks. That includes managing the code with a version control repository, testing and building the application on different platforms. The good news is: the actual deployment can easily be automated – and it certainly should be.

For you, as a developer, an automated deployment tool brings massive advantages: there is no need to manually track changes and upload files, you can quickly roll back a problematic release, and share automatically generated release notes with team members or customers.

The Operator

As a member of the ops team you might look at things from a different perspective. After all, you're responsible for the infrastructure. Of course, you love working with your colleagues from the dev team, and just like them, you can't wait to present your users with new tools and features. Since you're focusing your activities on keeping the work environment operational, you need to pay attention to other things than the developers do.

Your job is to keep the servers up and running, and deploying a new software version to a production environment is something that might cause trouble. Using an automated deployment tool will help you to define standards, to reduce the manual work, and to increase your company's speed to deliver new software at the same time.

Integrating a tool like DeployBot will automate the entire deployment process. That way you can set up a full deployment cycle with a safety mechanism to avoid unpleasant surprises. It also improves the collaboration between the development and the operations teams, deploying software in a reliable and secure manner.

The Project Manager

Whether you're freelancing, managing a small web agency or a team of developers in a large company, time is probably your most precious resource. You really don't want to spend time on managing outages caused by a problematic release. To minimize that risk, you know that you have to take measures before things become difficult. Establishing a fully automated deployment chain in your team is a significant step down that road.

Even if you're not developing software or operating the infrastructure, DeployBot is here to help. Its graphical user interface will help you to quickly get an overview. Even better: let DeployBot notify you when a deployment succeeds or fails. It can send out email notifications that show the deployed revision range, who deployed the changes, and link to the respective environment. That way, you're always kept in the loop about the latest developments.

Automation for Everybody

Even if setting up an automated deployment tool might take some time and require some effort, it’s worth it. Most of the tools out there can connect to various version control systems, to different servers and environments, and offer integrations for other applications and platforms that you and your team probably already use.