The DevOps lifecycle is a series of stages that guide you through building, testing, releasing, and maintaining software. This approach brings together development and operations teams to work more closely, helping you deliver software faster and with fewer errors. By following these stages, you can create more reliable software and keep your users satisfied.

Planning

A team at a fintech startup holds a sprint planning meeting to outline features for their mobile banking app. They use a shared board in Jira to break down each feature into user stories and assign tasks to developers, testers, and operations staff.

Coding

Developers at an e-commerce company use GitHub to collaborate on building a new shopping cart feature. Each developer creates a branch, writes code, and submits a pull request for review before merging changes into the main branch.

Building

A game development team configures Jenkins to automatically build their project every time new code is pushed. The build system compiles the game assets, runs unit tests, and packages the game into an installer.

Testing

A healthcare software provider uses automated test suites in Selenium to check their patient portal after every build. Test failures are reported immediately so developers can fix issues before the code moves forward.

Releasing

A SaaS company schedules weekly releases of their CRM tool. They use a release management tool to coordinate approvals, generate release notes, and ensure only tested and approved builds are deployed to production.

Deploying

A travel booking platform uses Kubernetes to deploy new versions of its API service. The deployment process automatically rolls out updates across multiple servers, minimizing downtime and ensuring a smooth upgrade for users.

Operating

An online education provider monitors their web app with Prometheus and Grafana. When server response times spike, the operations team investigates and scales resources to maintain performance.

Monitoring

A social media startup uses centralized logging and monitoring tools to track user activity and system health. When error rates increase, alerts notify the team to investigate and resolve problems before users are impacted.

Key Takeaway: How DevOps Lifecycle Stages Work Together

• Each stage in the DevOps lifecycle—planning, coding, building, testing, releasing, deploying, operating, and monitoring—connects seamlessly to form a continuous workflow;
• Automation and collaboration ensure that code moves quickly and safely from development to production;
• Feedback loops at every stage help you catch issues early and improve software quality;
• By integrating these stages, you reduce manual effort, minimize errors, and deliver updates to users faster and more reliably.