DevOps is an organizational and cultural rethink of how software-driven organizations can become organizations at velocity – agile enough to innovate and fast enough to deal with any change that comes their way.
Information technology is a central enabler of DevOps, but today’s better-faster-cheaper technology is not the whole story, as tools are only as good as the people wielding them. The more fundamental story here is the organizational and cultural transformation necessary to take full advantage of modern tech. Business at velocity depends upon such transformation.
DevOps, however, has proven hard to define. Perhaps the most striking misconception about DevOps is that it is about building software – in large part due to the formation of the term as a portmanteau of “development” and “operations.” True, DevOps involves a rethink of these phases of the software lifecycle to be sure – but that’s just the beginning.
The real focus of DevOps is actually the organization as a whole. DevOps calls for self-organizing teams made up of a mix of different roles and skill sets – not just dev and ops people, but also the people responsible for the customer experience, often including product specialists, marketing people, and others, depending on the goals at hand.
DevOps is thus the counterpart to digital transformation, as both these trends are reinventing how we run our businesses, not just the software organization or even the IT shop, but the entire enterprise.
Jason Bloomberg is President of Intellyx.
