Defining DevOps – Understanding its concepts and practices
If you ask 10 people what DevOps is, you will probably get 10 different answers, depending on these people’s backgrounds and probably the books they have read. Therefore, it is important for us to establish a working definition that we will use for DevOps for the rest of this book. Microsoft’s official definition of DevOps was coined by Donavan Brown at a conference in 2018. You can still find the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbFzojQOjyA. Here is the definition:
From this definition, we want to highlight a few essential points. To start with, it is essential to understand that DevOps is not a tool, a product, or a job title. Instead, it is a collaborative approach to software development. It is a way of working/thinking, and most of all, it is a change of culture (more on this later). Another key point to note is that the primary goal of DevOps is to ensure the speedy and frequent delivery of functional software to end users. If what has been implemented does not have this impact, it is likely not DevOps, or it has not been appropriately implemented (we will discuss this in more detail in the Staying clear of DevOps anti-types section in this chapter). The last point that we would like to stress is that there are three aspects to DevOps. There is a people aspect, a process aspect, and a product aspect. In the next section, we will begin by examining the process aspect, but before we do that, let’s discuss why organizations are rapidly moving towards a DevOps approach for software development and delivery.
The why of DevOps – Innovation, velocity, and speed
While we have dedicated significant time to discussing the process, people, and product aspects of DevOps, it is equally important to understand the driving factors that lead companies to embrace DevOps and the reasons for its growing significance in recent years. DevOps provides unique advantages to companies that other software delivery approaches cannot match. The following points are some of the benefits associated with DevOps adoption:
- Accelerating time to market: This refers to the ability to bring new products to market faster. According to research conducted by Puppet, companies that embrace the culture and practices of DevOps deploy code 46 times more frequently compared to those that do not.
- Adapting to the market and competition: This means being able to adapt to changes in the market and competition. For example, Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade and vintage goods, uses DevOps practices to deploy code changes 50 times per day. This allows the company to quickly test and launch new features, respond to user feedback, and stay ahead of competitors.
- Maintaining system stability and reliability: DevOps practices can help organizations maintain system stability and reliability by improving communication and collaboration between development and operations teams. For example, Netflix uses a DevOps approach to ensure that its streaming service remains available and responsive at all times. The company achieves this by automating its infrastructure deployment and using a “chaos monkey” tool to intentionally introduce failures in its systems, which helps identify and address weaknesses before they cause problems.
- Improving mean time to recovery: By adopting DevOps practices, organizations can improve their ability to recover from incidents and outages more efficiently. For instance, Target, a leading retail company in the US, reduced its overall mean time to recovery (MTTR) by 90% after implementing DevOps practices. This allowed the company to minimize the impact of outages and maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.
With the basics covered, let’s delve into the process used in DevOps to create workflows.
