Supercharging DevOps Productivity: The Key Role of Compliance

On any given week, I am usually spending a decent portion of my time relaying compliance-driven development requests to fintech dev teams. I know all too well the difficulties of wedging requests into already jam-packed sprints. Ensuring timely compliance with various standards can be a complex and resource-consuming process, especially in this new world of hyper-integrated, API-fueled, decentralized fintech product orchestration.

Regulatory requirements, and third-party demands, such as BaaS reporting expectations can create an ever-evolving landscape of compliance requirements that must be adopted and integrated at the code level.

An inability to keep pace with compliance demands can result in a significant backlog and/or a strain on dev resources. In this article, I’ll quickly cover the top 3 tips I’ve seen deployed in fintech environments that work to enhance DevOps efficiency as teams stay ahead of compliance-driven workloads.

1. Engage Compliance Early in the Development Process

To avoid costly roadblocks, derailment of production, or just plain headaches later in the development process, I highly recommend the engagement of your compliance team early on. By involving compliance from the beginning, organizations can identify potential compliance issues and address them proactively. This top-of-flow collaboration ensures that compliance requirements are considered from the outset, reducing the risk of rework and delays.

Questions such as (1) how will data from decision engines be maintained, (2) what format will consumer agreements be stored, and (3 ) how can consumer event data be extracted from the system are all examples of topics you should discuss with compliance before kicking off the first sprint. Why? Because understanding the business’s compliance user story as it relates to all development is a best-practiced way of avoiding unavoidable rework.

2. Embed Compliance Standards in the CI/CD Pipeline

Integrating compliance standards into the Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline is a highly effective way to build once and avoid rewinds. By developing compliance checklists and incorporating them into the development and deployment process, organizations can begin to build baseline compliance capabilities into the DevOps function. The more DevOps understands the general perspective of their compliance team on routine matters the faster and more efficient collaboration between the two functions will be.

3. Leverage Containers for Compliance

Containers provide a lightweight and portable environment for running applications. In the context of compliance, containers can be used to create compliant system components, also known as "Golden Images." These pre-approved, compliant components can be combined to build the bases for repeatable compliance elements, saving time and resources. By leveraging containers, organizations can ensure consistency and repeatability in their compliance efforts.

Conclusion

We all generally know fintech is fast-paced; but moving fast is less impactful if you constantly need to take 2, 3, or 20 steps backward to correct missteps. By adopting a strategic approach to compliance and DevOps collaboration teams can supercharge their production capabilities helping to fuel a significant competitive advantage for their organization.

For more information on how my team and I partner with DevOps teams check us out here.