What Is DevOps?

(Excerpted from Effective DevOps by Jennifer Davis and Ryn Daniels [O’Reilly])

DevOps is a cultural movement that changes how individuals think about their work, values the diversity of work done, supports intentional processes that accelerate the rate by which businesses realize value, and measures the effect of social and technical change. It is a way of thinking and a way of working that enables individuals and organizations to develop and maintain sustainable work practices. It is a cultural framework for sharing stories and developing empathy, enabling people and teams to practice their crafts in effective and lasting ways.

A Prescription for Culture

DevOps is a prescription for culture. No cultural movement exists in a vacuum; social structure and culture are inherently intertwined. The hierarchies within organizations, industry connections, and globalization influence culture as well as the values, norms, beliefs, and artifacts that reflect these areas. The software that we create does not exist separately from the people who use it and the people who create it. DevOps is about finding ways to adapt and innovate social structure, culture, and technology together in order to work more effectively.

The DevOps Equation

The danger for a movement that regards itself as new is that it may try to embrace everything that is not old.

Lee Roy Beach et al., Naturalistic Decision Making and Related Research Lines

This is not a prescription for the One True Way ...