DevOps – Misunderstandings

The DevOps movement has been an interesting and confusing term in our industry. I thought I would write about this because I had an interesting conversation at work and it seems that we all had different ideas of what this lovely word means.

Lets look at how Wikipedia defines it

DevOps is a software development method that stresses communication, collaboration and integration between software developers and information technology professionals. DevOps is a response to the interdependence of software development and IT operations. It aims to help an organisation rapidly produce software products and services

So what does this mean?

DevOps is purely a culture, a way of thinking and interacting.


The biggest confusion that I saw with my peers is that DevOps is a team that needs to be formed as a separate entity. This is wrong!


DevOps is collaboration between people from the development, operations and testing. This gathering is controlled purely by the nature of a self organising team. They don't report to a DevOps manager.


Another misconception that I noticed was that Infrastructure As Code is DevOps. This is wrong!


Infrastructure As Code came from the understanding that people were tired of having Snowflake Infrastructure and a lot of these problems have been solved in the development world. This really means that we are being pragmatic and solving our own problems by learning from each other. Infrastructure As Code is the key to implementing DevOps concepts.


Hopefully this clarifies some of the misunderstandings, you can find further information about DevOps can be found here.