Top 5 RPA Use Cases in DevOps in 2024

DevOps is a set of practices that focus on automating and managing software and application development processes to ensure:

• Faster product delivery
• Consistent response to customers
• Collaboration among software development and operations teams

However, DevOps struggles with several challenges due to the merging of two teams. These challenges include manual documentation, time-consuming manual testing, and difficulty moving from legacy systems to microservices.

In this article, we explore how RPA can tackle the top challenges faced by DevOps teams. 

1. Monitor DevOps infrastructure

DevOps infrastructure consists of different servers, networks, virtual machines, and platforms used for software development. RPA bots can automate several repetitive tasks in infrastructure management, such as:

• Monitoring server connections and latency
• Monitoring cloud storage utilization
• Monitoring containers
• Reporting misconnections

Benefit to DevOps team

Leveraging RPA to monitor DevOps infrastructure helps IT teams react quickly to issues, and avoid outages. RPA bots also create an audit log which can be used to analyze recurring errors in the infrastructure. 

2. Automate reporting

DevOps reports track the progress of software development, provide insights about the build and release pipeline, and enable developers to make data-driven decisions about the production process. RPA bots can automate DevOps reporting as they can generate reports about:

• Infrastructure performance 
• Recurring errors in processes
• Incident response
• Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) 

Benefits to DevOps team

Automating reporting processes reduces the time spent on manual reporting tasks such as data collection and entry, ensures that no error occurs without being reported, and since RPA bots can be integrated with other solutions, the generated reports can be easily visualized using BI dashboards. 

3. Automate software testing

Software testing is an important step in DevOps. However, many tests are repetitive and time consuming. RPA bots can be programmed to perform numerous software tests without human intervention and report the results to the designated employee or team. Some tests which can be automated via RPA include:

• Smokes tests
• Unit tests
• Integration tests
• Visual regressions tests
• User interaction tests

Benefits to DevOps team

Leveraging RPA to automate software testing increases testing coverage and accuracy, increases feedback speed, and provides better data insights.

See our article on automated testing to explore the frameworks, tools, and pros and cons of testing automation. 

4. Run cybersecurity tests

Before launching new software, DevOps teams run numerous cybersecurity tests to ensure that the software version is safe and protected against cyber threats. RPA bots can be programmed to run several types of cybersecurity tests due to their repetitive nature. Some of these tests include:

• Cyber threat hunts
• Penetration tests (pentest)
• Breach and Attack simulations (BAS)
• Vulnerability scans

Benefit to DevOps team

Leveraging RPA to automate app security tests ensures a fast and safe software launch, enables developers to track threats in real time, and creates an audit trail that helps analysts detect threat trends and vulnerabilities in applications before launch. 

Read in detail in our in-depth article about RPA use cases, benefits, and challenges in cybersecurity. 

5. Ensure compliance with regulations

There is a growing number of regulations surrounding software developments and releases that focus on data privacy, code transparency, and accountability. To avoid legal issues and lawsuits, organizations need to stay up-to-date about regulation changes, alter their internal policies, and notify relevant departments about the changes. RPA bots can ensure compliance in the DevOps department by:

• Monitoring and regulating access to DevOps platforms and infrastructure
• Verify DevOps’ event logs against existing regulations and policies to identify non-compliant processes.
• Scrape regulation websites and news to identify changes in regulations.
• Create audit logs of DevOps processes, system logins, and code modifications for further audit purposes. 

Benefit to DevOps team

Automating repetitive compliance processes reduces the time that DevOps teams need to spend on manual compliance tasks such as reporting and web scraping, ensures all team members are notified about regulation changes to avoid errors, and facilitates cooperation among legal, operations, and tech teams.

See our article on compliance automation to explore the top 5 use cases of RPA to ensure accurate and insightful compliance. 

For more on RPA

To explore RPA use cases in IT and back office processes, read our in-depth articles:

• Top 16 RPA Use Cases in IT Services
• 43 Back Office Automation Examples with RPA, WLA, & AI / ML

To get a better grasp of RPA technology, download our comprehensive whitepaper on the topic:

If you want to invest in an off-the-shelf RPA tool, check our data-driven list of RPA vendors to compare different features and benefits, and explore our hub of automation solutions.

And we can guide you choose the right tool:

This article was drafted by former AIMultiple industry analyst Alamira Jouman Hajjar.