As a lifelong word junkie, I can honestly say that I’ve never seen more debate, argument, and failure to reach an agreed upon definition of a word than we’re seeing over the word “DevOps.” And while it can be frustrating to find a definition that works for you, and not be swayed by the next essay or cute video that gives a new interpretation—for nerds like me, the ever-changing, wildly different beliefs of DevOps’ meaning, and even its origin are an absolute blast to pour over.
A simple Google search of “What is DevOps?” gives a great cross-section of what we’re talking about.
“…DevOps – essentially, bringing the development and operational teams closer together through automation to support the speed of change the business requires.”
– Clive Longbottom, ComputerWeekly.com
“…DevOps is “a cross-disciplinary community of practice dedicated to the study of building, evolving and operating rapidly-changing resilient systems at scale.”
– Jez Humble, Agile Admin Blog
“…to achieve a certain project management philosophy that involves more efficiency in communications between development teams and other parts of a greater business or organization.”
“The primary goal of DevOps is making reliably performing production software that can be changed rapidly.“
– Charles Babcock, InformationWeek
“…If someone tells you, ‘I’ll sell you DevOps,’ get up and leave the meeting…The term ‘DevOps’ is a horrible one.”
– Andi Mann, quoted by Charles Babcock, InformationWeek
For this week’s TapIn Open Forum, we want your best definition or interpretation of DevOps. In the comments section below, give us your best DevOps definition, and feel free to respectfully argue against those you think miss the mark. We’ll give everyone a week to participate, and then we’ll mail one of our awesome Skytap t-shirts to whoever we think has the best grasp on this hotly debated practice, belief, culture—whatever it is!
