Why DevOps?

The short answer is that DevOps increases productivity by allowing developers to do what they do best: build fantastic software rather than manually performing low-value work like manually checking log files. DevOps practices automate repetitive work such as running tests and deployments, monitoring production software for problems, and building a problem-resilient deployment methodology. Developers are empowered to build and experiment, which leads to increased productivity.

There are many definitions for DevOps. In this article, DevOps means that a team owns the entire lifecycle of a piece of software. A DevOps team designs, implements, deploys, monitors, fixes problems, and updates software. It owns the code and the infrastructure the code runs on. It is not only responsible for the end-user experience but production problems.

A tenet of DevOps is to build a process that expects problems and empowers developers to respond to them effectively. A DevOps process should provide developers with immediate feedback about the system's health after each deployment. The closer to inception a problem is discovered, the lower its impact and the sooner the team can progress to the next body of work. Developers can experiment, build, release, and try new ideas when it is easy to deploy changes and recover from problems.

What DevOps is not: technology. If you buy DevOps tools and call it DevOps, that’s putting the cart before the horse. The essence of DevOps is building a culture of shared responsibility, transparency, and faster feedback. Technology is simply a tool that enables this.