If you’re a hard core techie, and stay updated with current trends in the IT world, chances are that you’ve already heard of the term DevOps. But just what is it all about, anyway, and why is it touted to be the next big game changer?
DevOps is a movement that has been brought about in the software industry by people who think it’s high time there is a change. For too many years now, it has been tacitly understood that if you are working on a software project, it is bound to run late, exceed the budget, and underperform. A sorry state of affairs indeed, but yes, this is the way things have been!
So we have had these all-too familiar situations outlined below:
- No one is confident whether the software will actually work when deployed
- Problems manifest the moment the site goes live
- It is very hard or impossible to change an application, once delivered
- Teams tend to ‘pass the buck’- developers blame testers, who blame release managers. And so on, and so forth.
We’ve all been there, and done that. But there are some folks who actually decided to do something about this situation. And that’s how the concept of DevOps was born.
The DevOps movement was started by some people who believed that by combining technology and changing the attitude of teams, software development and delivery can be revolutionized. “DevOps” is a portmanteau of ‘development’ and ‘operations’, with the buzzwords being communication, collaboration, integration, automation and cooperation.
The DevOps approach clearly is a win-win situation, and is an understanding of how collaboration between developers and operations staff can create value at all stages of the product lifecycle. DevOps leans toward extending basic Agile and Lean principles, in a manner that includes the overall services, including systems and operations.
In the DevOps world of the future, the paradigm has shifted and boundaries have blurred. Will this movement catch on? Let’s wait and watch.
