What exactly is DevOps?

DevOps is a cross-functional combination of Software Development and IT Operations’ practices. It ensures industry-standard software quality by shortening the software development life cycle and providing continuous software delivery.

There are various definitions associated with the term DevOps, but the most encompassing of all says:

DevOps is a collection of specific cultural practices, philosophies, and tools to equip an organization with the ability to deliver on-time, good-quality, and high-velocity software products.

It is characterized by the key principles of:
1. Ownership sharing
2. Automating workflows
3. Agile and rapid feedback

How DevOps works

Traditionally, Development and Operations teams used to work as two functionally independent and siloed teams.

Under the DevOps model, both teams work hand in hand across the entire software development life cycle, from development to testing through deployment and operations.

DevOps practices

The seven essential DevOps practices are:

1. Configuration management: Version Controlling of the code
2. Continuous integration: Merging code into a shared repository and obtaining rapid feedback
3. Automated testing: Speed up the testing process
4. Infrastructure as code: – Automating and version controlling IT infrastructure
5. Continuous delivery: Automating every source code change to be release ready
6. Continuous deployment: Automating production deployment end-to-end
7. Continuous monitoring: Proactively monitoring the application