In the past, a major methodology of developing software was used: waterfall. It consists of breaking down the development process into sequential, linear tasks, executing one after another and never reviewing a task after it is completed. It flows steadily downwards, like a waterfall.
It entails a long planning phase, with strict time schedule, budget, and implementation of the entire project in one shot. Also, it brings strict documentation, a very formal review process, and sign off from IT ops between every phase.
In one word, it is inflexible. Project’s demands change, teams change, budget changes, feature changes, management changes. Everything is very dynamic (and unstable!) throughout the software development process.
To overcome those issues, the Agile development emerged as a new way of thinking about project management. It is a cornerstone of DevOps.
Read more about Agile here:
DevOps became a thing in the late 2000s as a response for the inflexibility when developing software, tearing down the walls between different teams, enabling more collaboration, shared responsibility, shorter feedback loops and better software.
Read more about how Agile and DevOps work together:
The term was coined by Patrick Debois in 2009, when he organized the first DevOpsDays conference in Ghent, Belgium. Here the term became a buzzword.
There are DevOpsDays conferences all around the world now! You can check them here: https://devopsdays.org/.
Another main event in the DevOps history is the release of The Phoenix Project, an IT novel, introducing DevOps concepts to the readers. It is amazing, you should add it to your reading list!
Know more:
Faster software delivery: business can respond better to market changes due to software development automation and streamline.
Better software quality: using integration and automation tools, software errors and bugs can be detected and fixed earlier.
Improved collaboration and efficiency: high level of collaboration between different teams inside the organisation, enabling a culture of knowledge sharing and best practices.
Increased complexity: DevOps practices usually require the adoption and integration of multiple new tools and technologies, creating a more complex and heterogeneous software environment. Also, giving more autonomy to different teams might lead to a lack of standardization across the company. Having a standardized and battle-tested “DevOps toolchain” helps to mitigate these issues.
Cultural shock: shifting an organisation’s culture is a hard and slow process, which requires buy-in from the top management, trickling down to all the teams and employees. Creating a DevOps and breaking down the silos mindset will require a lot of training, communication and iteration between different groups of people.
Finding DevOps experts: finding experts in both development and operations areas, with a collaborative mindset and ready to integrate work from different teams is not easy – and sometimes quite costly.