DevOps Disambiguation

DevOps is many issues

Being on the prime of the hype-cycle, there’s numerous stuff being written about DevOps versus varied requirements, frameworks and religions. Most of it isn’t actually useful as a result of the writer isn’t clear about what she or he means by “DevOps”. Is it a hen? Is it a aircraft? Effectively, sure – DevOps is many issues, you simply should be clear about which a part of DevOps you need to examine with ITIL®, IT4IT^TM and many others. So let’s disambiguate DevOps.

Most of the inaugural illuminati behind DevOps have been notoriously reluctant to outline the beast, in all probability from a real concern that by defining it, they’d kill one thing that’s nonetheless rising¹⁾. Alternatively, these later-but-still-early adopters who don’t intuitively really feel what DevOps is, are actually struggling to know it and get worth out of it. So there’s a legitimate must codify it, whereas on the similar time not ossifying it.

Cultural norms, technical practices and structure

Let’s check out definition by one among DevOps’ mover and shakers, Gene Kim. In an interview with Aprill Allen²⁾, Gene outlined DevOps as “the set of cultural norms and technical practices that allow organizations to have a quick circulate of labor from growth by means of check and deployment, whereas preserving world-class reliability, availability, and safety.” Extra not too long ago, Gene added “structure” to the set. So DevOps includes cultural norms, technical practices and structure. That is the primary query to ask when any individual mentions DevOps: are you speaking about cultural norms and/or technical practices and/or structure?

Differing scopes

Why is that this related? As a result of, as an illustration, once we take a deeper have a look at cultural norms and technical practices, we see that they’ve differing scopes. Cultural norms³⁾, reminiscent of respect, belief and a ‘no victims’ angle, are relevant to all facets of IT, enterprise, or life basically for that matter. Alternatively, most of DevOps’ technical practices are extra restricted of their software. Technical practices might be grouped into practices that enhance (1) circulate, (2) suggestions, (3) continuous studying and experimentation, and (4) integrating information security, change administration and compliance⁴⁾. A minority of practices – reminiscent of for continuous experimentation and studying – are relevant all through the entire IT worth stream and past. However a lot of the practices are associated to particular IT value streams. Take the flow-related practices. Many of the practices on this area appear to start out with “steady”:

• Steady integration: regularly synchronize developer’s working copies with a shared mainline⁵⁾
• Steady testing: routinely check to acquire rapid suggestions on dangers⁶⁾
• Steady supply: the power to all the time put a product into manufacturing⁵⁾
• Continuous deployment: routinely deploy into manufacturing at any time when product passes QA⁵⁾

We’re nonetheless not there

However we’re not there but. Even inside a seemingly apparent time period like “deployment” there’s room for confusion, witness a energetic dialogue on Rob England’s IT Skeptic weblog⁷⁾. Historically, deployment has been related to software program: “a brand new launch is deployed to the manufacturing setting.” What’s incorrect with that? Effectively, nothing besides that in a progressive DevOps setting, the brand new software program has been reside within the production environment lengthy earlier than customers get to truly use it. Function flags and person profile configurations are used to supply entry. Some folks discuss with this ‘service request fulfilment’ as deployment as properly, so when any individual says “deployment” it will be very useful to state what’s being deployed. Is it about software software program deployment or software service deployment?

So if you wish to debunk a few of the nonsense that’s being bandied about, drill down till you uncover significant verbs and objects. The crisper and extra countable the verb, the higher the disambiguation.

References:

• Mark Smalley http://allthingsitsm.com/kill-devops/
• Gene Kim http://knowledgebird.com/interview-gene-kim-devops/
• John Willis http://itrevolution.com/devops-culture-part-1/and http://itrevolution.com/devops-culture-part-2/
• Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, and John Willis, The DevOps Handbook http://itrevolution.com/devops-handbook
• Varied contributors http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28608015/continuous-integration-vs-continuous-delivery-vs-continuous-deployment
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_testing

Abstract:

DevOps Disambiguation

A definition by one among DevOps’ mover and shakers, Gene Kim. In an interview with Aprill Allen2), Gene outlined DevOps as “the set of cultural norms and technical practices that allow organizations to have a quick circulate of labor from growth by means of check and deployment, whereas preserving world-class reliability, availability, and safety.” Extra not too long ago, Gene added “structure” to the set. So DevOps includes cultural norms, technical practices and structure. That is the primary query to ask when any individual mentions DevOps: are you speaking about cultural norms and/or technical practices and/or structure?