The term DevOps is appearing more and more in the agile conversation mix. What is it and why do we need to consider it? Is it for our organisation? Is it for me?
‘DevOps’ was first coined in 2008 at an Agile Conference; a concatenation of the words ‘Developers’ and ‘Operations’. But why? Well, let’s face it, in many organisations IT development and operations are often rather siloed functions. Now this is not trying to suggest an ‘us and them’ culture, but development and operations typically have very different goals – a bit like the project versus BAU situation. Developers are focused on creating the new and embracing change, operators are focusing on stabilising the day-to-day running of IT.
A clash of cultures? A conflict of interests? But we all are working for the overall organisation, aren’t we? Developers need operators, operators need developers (even if no one wants to admit it!). There is a need to encourage (and exploit) the synergy of the two.
Enter DevOps
Put succinctly, DevOps is a set of practices that focuses on the collaboration of both software developers and other IT professionals, while automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes. So yes, it is about integration between development and operational teams and facilitating a supportive culture.
Why DevOps?
DevOps aims to establish an overall environment and shared culture where building, testing and releasing software occurs rapidly, frequently and of course reliably. The results? Higher customer satisfaction, better quality, faster delivery and lower costs.
“Up to 200 times faster software deployment, 30 times increased deployment frequency, and 60 times higher change success rates, organisations such as Netflix, Spotify, and Facebook are revolutionising the IT game by successfully implementing DevOps principles.”
DevOps Agile Skills Association
Who are DASA?
DevOps Agile Skills Association (DASA) is an open global community for DevOps and Agile Skills development. It is a community-driven organisation open for participating member organisations to help define role-based competencies and learning curricula.
DASA DevOps Principles
At the core of DASA DevOps are 6 principles which are deemed essential when adopting or migrating to a DevOps way of working:
- Customer-centric action
- Create with the End in Mind
- End-to-end Responsibility
- Cross-functional Autonomous Teams
- Continuous Improvement
- Automate everything you can
“DevOps is about experiences, ideas and culture to create high-performing IT organisations.”
PM-Partners group offers a DevOps Fundamentals training course. Contact our Professional Development Consultants on 1300 70 13 14.
