What is DevOps ?

We hear this question very often, even around software developer, engineering or IT related roles, and most of the time, answers refer to DevOps as a role or a profession. We get so many different definitions of what DevOps is nowadays, that it’s hard to know what the term even means anymore.

In the IT business, we usually see communication and coordination between teams that participate in an application development process, as a challenge . Was and still is common, to hear phrases like “the infrastructure doesn’t have the enough resources to run the code, we need to scale it up” or “the code is not working as it should, infrastructure is not the problem”. Sometimes this type of conversation leads to an unfinished debate, not allowing to identify what the real issue is, beneath an application performance. DevOps comes into play, to try to fill and fix that gap.

We could define DevOps as the practice of operations and development engineers participating together through the entire service lifecycle, from the design and development process, all the way to production support. It enables the possibility to have a centralized and coordinated environment between teams that take part in the application build, deployment and maintenance process. Represents a way to think of IT areas that participate in delivering values to the company or clients, as a whole, being able to interact better, and learn from each other. Is where teams get converged to assure a smooth process to complete an automated application workflow. DevOps is a culture, not a role.

"A great team doesn't mean that they had the smartest people. What made those teams great is that everyone trusted one another. It can be a powerful thing when that magic dynamic exists."
― Gene Kim, The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win