MLOps: The Best Practices and How To Apply Them

Here are some of the best practices for implementing MLOps successfully.



MLOps: The Best Practices and How To Apply Them
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You’re likely already familiar with machine learning and its uses in today’s world. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have facilitated the development of intelligent software capable of accurately predicting outcomes and automating various jobs usually performed by humans. As vital as it is to include machine learning into an app, it is even more critical for organizations to ensure that it runs smoothly.

Companies utilize a set of best practices referred to as “machine learning operations,” or MLOps, for this purpose. And, MLOps have become critical for a prosperous future of any business. 

According to Deloitte, the market will likely expand by $4 billion by 2025, implying a nearly 12-fold growth since 2019.

Despite the numerous advantages that machine learning brings to various business processes, firms have difficulty implementing ML approaches to improve productivity.

 

Best MLOps Practices and How To Apply Them

 

You can’t just sign up with a new SaaS provider or create new cloud computing instances and expect MLOps to work. It necessitates meticulous preparation and a unified approach across teams and departments, whether you’ve started a DAO or registered an LLC. The following are some of the best practices for implementing MLOps successfully.

 

Validation of a Model Across Several Market Segments

 

Models can be reused, but software can’t. A model’s usefulness diminishes over time, necessitating a retraining process. Each new situation requires the adjustment of models. You’ll need a training pipeline to accomplish this.

While experiment monitoring can help us manage model versioning and repeatability, validating models before using them is also vital.

Offline or online validation is an option businesses can use based on their priorities. Use the test dataset to evaluate the model’s suitability for achieving business goals, concentrating on metrics such as precision, accuracy, etc. Before making a promotion decision, the metrics should be compared with the current production/baseline models.

It is possible to perform a promotion or rollback with ease if your experiments are well tracked and managed in terms of metadata. In this post, we’ll look at validating an online model using A/B testing to see if it performs well on real data.

Machine learning systems are becoming more aware of the biases they can pick up from data. An example of this is Twitter’s image cropping tool, which was ineffective for some users. It is possible to spot and repair this inaccuracy by comparing your model’s performance to different user groups. The model’s performance should also be tested on various data sets to confirm that it meets the requirements.

 

Try New Things, and Keep Track of the Results

 

Hyperparameter search and feature engineering are constantly growing fields. The goal of ML teams is to produce the best system possible, considering the current state of technology and the changing patterns in the data.

However, this entails keeping alongside the most recent trends and standards. Also, test these concepts to see if they can help your machine learning (ML) system perform better.

Data, code, and hyperparameters can all be used in experiments. Every possible combination of variables produces metrics that can be compared to the results of other experiments. It is also possible that the environment in which the investigation happens can alter the results.

You might also want to deploy time-tracking software to ensure the timeliness of results and keep track of time spent on each project. 

 

Understand the Maturity of Your MLOps

 

A maturity model for MLOps adoption is used by leading cloud providers like Microsoft and Google. 

Organizational change and new working practices are necessary for the implementation of MLOps. This gradually happens as the organization’s systems and procedures start to develop.

Any successful MLOps implementation demands an honest evaluation of the organization’s MLOps maturity progress. After conducting a valid maturity assessment, firms can learn to advance up to a maturity level. Changes to the deployment process, such as implementing DevOps or bringing on new team members, are a part of this.

There are various ways to store data for machine learning, such as a feature store. Feature stores are helpful for organizations with a relatively developed data infrastructure. They need to ensure that different data teams use the same features and reduce the amount of duplication of effort. A feature store may not be worth the effort if an organization has only a few data scientists or analysts.

Organizations may let their technology, processes, and teams stack to mature together by utilizing an MLOps maturity model. It ensures the possibility of iteration and testing tools before the implementation.

 

Do a Cost-Benefit Analysis

 

Make sure you understand what MLOps can do for your organization. You can efficiently handle each transaction if you follow your strategy while making another purchase. Assume you’re a car buyer looking to pick the best one for yourself. Of course, you would have a wide range of possibilities—for instance, sports cars, SUVs, compacts, luxury sedans, etc. You must first choose which category best suits your needs for a cost-effective purchase and then analyze different models and segments based on your budget.

When choosing the best MLOps technology for your company, the same rules apply. For example, sports vehicles and SUVs have different advantages and disadvantages. In the same way, you can analyze the strengths and weaknesses of several MLOps tools.  

To make an informed strategic decision, you must consider several variables, including your company’s budget and goals, the MLOps activities you intend to conduct, the source and format of the datasets you intend to work with, and the capabilities of your team.

 

Keep Open Lines of Communication

 

Product Managers and UX designers can impact how the product that supports your system engages with your customers. Machine learning engineers, DevOps engineers, data scientists, data visualization specialists, and software developers all work together to implement and manage a long-term machine learning system. 

Employee performance is reviewed and acknowledged by managers and business owners, while compliance professionals verify that activities are aligned with the company’s policy and regulatory standards.

Machine learning systems need to communicate if they continue to meet business objectives in the face of changing user and data patterns and expectations. 

 

Incorporate Automation Into Your Workflows

 

A company’s MLOps maturity might arise thanks to extensive and advanced automation. Many machine learning tasks must be performed by hand in environments lacking MLOps. This includes feature engineering, data cleansing and transformation, slicing training and testing data into smaller chunks, building model training code, etc. 

Data scientists create room for error and waste time that could be used for exploration by performing these procedures manually.

Continuous retraining, where data analysts may establish pipelines for validation, data ingestion, feature engineering, experimentation, and model testing, is a perfect example of automation in action. Continuous retraining prevents model drift and is commonly seen as an early step in automating machine learning.

 

Conclusion

 

Overall, machine learning is complex, but it is possible if you employ MLOps to improve communication among the teams involved in its development and implementation. It’s not just detailed and efficient, but it may also save firms money and time to establish new machine learning systems.

 
 
Nahla Davies is a software developer and tech writer. Before devoting her work full time to technical writing, she managed — among other intriguing things — to serve as a lead programmer at an Inc. 5,000 experiential branding organization whose clients include Samsung, Time Warner, Netflix, and Sony.