After watching this video, you will be able
to define DevOps, identify misconceptions about DevOps, and
recognize the best approach for teams using DevOps. The term DevOps is often misunderstood. For example, this drop-down list that
I saw recently while signing up for a webinar. It asked for my job function and provided
the options of DevOps/Technical Ops or Software Developer/Engineer. I’m a software engineer who practices DevOps. These job titles don’t reflect DevOps and
frankly, this organization should know better. Clearly, they did not notice the letters “D-E-V”
in DevOps, which stand for “development.” Here is a clue, if you’re not doing development,
you’re not doing DevOps, you’re just doing Ops. They apparently did not understand this. There are both Dev and Ops in software development. For them, DevOps/Technical Ops is something
that the Ops people do. But DevOps is not something that just Ops
people do. There are different perspectives of DevOps. You start with traditional development and
operations that have a wall of confusion between them. Many organizations, like this webinar organization
from my example, think that DevOps is something the Ops people do, and that DevOps is a subset
of operations. Some organizations think that DevOps is something
developers do. But most organizations think DevOps is
a separate team that sits between Dev and Ops and keeps both of them happy. I’m going to talk more about that in a moment. None of these perspectives are correct. DevOps is a mindset that the whole organization
adopts. You will see this a lot in start-ups. DevOps is their company culture. It’s Dev and Ops working together with the
same mindset, preferably on the same team, using the same goals and measurements. Jez Humble wrote, “The DevOps movement addresses
the dysfunction that results from organizations composed of functional silos. Thus, creating another functional silo that
sits between Dev and Ops is clearly a poor (and ironic) way to solve these problems.” Remember, there is no such thing as a DevOps
team. That is an antipattern; it causes more problems
than it would solve. You see, DevOps is the recognition that working
in silos doesn’t work. You may have seen this “wall of confusion”
graphic, made famous by Andrew Clay Shafer. It depicts the diametrically opposed goals
of development and operations. Development is measured by how many new features
they can push to production. Operations, on the other hand, is measured
by how stable production is. One way to stabilize production is to not
change anything, like adding new features. If you create a separate DevOps team, you
are just creating another silo that further separates Dev and Ops. This doesn’t make any sense when you look
at it this way. You don’t create a team to make you DevOps
any more than you would create a team to make you Agile. No one forms an Agile team and claims that
their organization is suddenly Agile because of that team over there. No, the organization must adopt the Agile
mindset, becoming Agile. DevOps is no different. The reality is that DevOps is not a job title. It is not something one person does, or a
team does. It is a cultural transformation on an organizational
scale. It is the practice of development and operations
engineers working together during the entire software lifecycle, preferably on the same
team, following Lean and Agile principles that allow them to deliver high-quality software
stably and continuously. It starts with learning how to work differently
and embracing cross-functional teams with openness, transparency, and trust as pillars. If that doesn’t sound like your organization,
then you are probably not practicing DevOps. In this video, you learned that DevOps is
a mindset that the whole organization adopts. DevOps solves the problems caused by siloed
teams. DevOps is the practice of development and
operations engineers working together during the entire software lifecycle, following Lean
and Agile principles that allow them to deliver high-quality results.