The term "DevOps" is derived from the words "development" and "operations." It refers to a collaborative approach to software development and IT operations within a company.
At its core, DevOps is a philosophy that emphasizes communication and collaboration between various teams in an organization, including development, operations, and others. In a more specific sense, DevOps involves iterative software development, automation, and programmable infrastructure deployment and maintenance. DevOps also entails culture changes that build trust and cohesion between developers and systems administrators and align technological projects to business requirements. As such, it can affect software delivery chains, services, job roles, IT tools, and best practices.
Although DevOps is not a technology, it typically involves certain common methodologies, such as continuous integration and continuous delivery or deployment (CI/CD) tools that emphasize task automation, systems and tools that support DevOps adoption (including real-time monitoring, incident management, configuration management, and collaboration platforms), and cloud computing, microservices, and containers implemented concurrently with DevOps methodologies.
DevOps is one of many techniques that IT staff can use to execute IT projects that meet business needs. It can coexist with other strategies such as Agile software development, IT service management frameworks like ITIL, and project management directives such as Lean and Six Sigma. Some IT professionals argue that the term "DevOps" should explicitly include business (BizDevOps), security (DevSecOps), or other areas.
DevOps aims to improve work throughout the software development lifecycle. The DevOps process can be visualized as an infinite loop comprising planning, coding, building, testing, releasing, deploying, operating, monitoring, and -- through feedback -- planning again, which resets the loop. The ultimate goal of DevOps is to write software that meets user requirements, deploys without wasted time, and runs optimally on the first try.
To align software with expectations, developers and stakeholders communicate about the project, and developers work on small updates that go live independently of each other. To avoid wait times, IT teams use CI/CD pipelines and other automation to move code from one step of development and deployment to another. Teams review changes immediately and can enforce policies to ensure releases meet standards. To deploy good code to production, DevOps adherents use containers or other methods to make the software behave the same way from development through testing and into production. They deploy changes individually so that problems are traceable.
DevOps encourages collaboration between IT specialists to solve communication and priority problems. In a traditional structure, development and operations teams work in silos, which can lead to communication gaps and limited business growth. With a DevOps culture, developers and operations teams work together to build viable software, test it in realistic conditions, and roll out changes in small and reversible increments. This approach greatly simplifies incident management and allows for a faster process from idea to live software, which can provide a competitive advantage for businesses.
In summary, DevOps is a collaborative approach to software development and IT operations that involves iterative software development, automation, and programmable infrastructure deployment and maintenance. It aims to improve work throughout the software development lifecycle and encourages collaboration between IT specialists to solve communication and priority problems.
