How can you stay ahead of SDLC trends?

Personally, SDLC models will evolve as tech stacks and desired outcomes evolve. But at core they are all driven by the same principles - communication, collaboration, iteration, quality and timelines. As long as we keep these in focus, learning new skills only helps us fine tune these to perfection.

It is important to understand the difference between agile and DevOps. Just doing scrum or kanban or using continuous integration does not make your team DevOps. Agile is a delivery model where work is broken up into small deliverables that make up a larger whole. DevOps is an operating model where infrastructure operations are rolled into the development team in order to give the team maximum autonomy. In DevOps, the development team owns and manages the infrastructure environment in which its applications run. Agile is an enabler of DevOps, but they are two different things.

Don't forget about security! DevSecOps simply means injecting security checks and scans into your CI/CD pipeline. For example, static code analysis, container vulnerability scanning, and package/library audits. These tools are widely available and generally easy to integrate. For any major project, it's well worth the effort to protect the business and brand.

In my experience, security is pertinent to the quality and reliability of software delivery. Bear in mind the importance of code review in every software development.

Starting a small project is a great way to practice in a real world situation. It gives you chance to see how the new technology interacts and integrates with existing best practices and your current CI/CD, etc.

Customer requirements are never static, especially for smaller organizations. I have often designed future 'hooks' into systems to allow for functionality not currently needed, but may be required in the future. As a simple example, the customer says they only need to save a single contact for their clients. I know from experience that they will ask to have multiple contacts per client so I design the system from the start to be able to accommodate this. A little foresight can save huge effort later.