DevOps is a term
DevOps is a term that appears more and more often in the corporate IT environment. Even so, there is still no standardized or uniform definition that would pin down exactly what DevOps means. What does exist is a set of different perspectives that let us understand the concept better.
DevOps is an approach
One of those perspectives is the definition from the book "The DevOps Handbook", which comes closest to an agreement between academics and practitioners. According to it, DevOps is the result of applying proven principles from the field of physical manufacturing and management to the field of information technology. The approach draws on Lean management, the Theory of Constraints, the Toyota Production System, resilience engineering, learning organizations, safety, human factors and more. DevOps also builds on the values of high-trust management, employee leadership and organizational change management. The result is reliability, stability and world-class safety at ever lower cost and effort. DevOps ensures fast flow and reliability in product management, development, quality assurance, IT operations and information security.
In short, DevOps can also be characterized as an interdisciplinary community that deals with the creation, development and management of large-scale systems that change rapidly. In other words, DevOps represents the hands-on work of operations and development engineers collaborating across the entire life cycle of a service, from design through development to production support.
DevOps is two areas
The key connection in the name DevOps is between two areas: Software Development (development) and IT Operations (operation). The goal of that merger is to remove the barriers between the two areas in order to achieve faster software delivery with greater stability and resilience.
Fundamentally, DevOps is an approach that makes sure software is properly functional and quickly available on the market. Developers and operations managers use various tools and processes to collaborate and simplify their work.
Overall, DevOps improves the efficiency of the people who create software and encourages them to collaborate better, which leads to faster development and higher quality software.
