QA Revolution

DevOps: The Top 6 Industry Myths

DevOps is transforming the way IT is done.  As with any movement there is a vast amount of uncertainty and that drives the creation of myths regarding DevOps.  Here are a few:

1-DevOps replaces Agile.  DevOps is compatible with agile and they are both complimentary.  DevOps helps to complete the task of done.  Testing is a critical component and it must happen in order for the agile process to be successful.

2-DevOps replaces ITIL.  DevOps and ITIL are compatible.  Many of the ITIL standards that are put in place are greatly enhanced by the workflow that exists within DevOps.  ITIL requires automation, especially for change, configuration and release processes.

3-DevOps means NoOps.  DevOps can be misunderstood and many people view DevOps as NoOps.  DevOps puts more responsibility on Development to do code deployments while maintaining service delivery levels.  By performing DevOps, development is taking over many IT Ops functions.  These require that IT Ops become more self serviced based.  Automation greatly helps and provides development the ability to do the work themselves.

4-DevOps is only for open source software.  There are many tools out there today that enhance DevOps.  A lot of those tools are open source, however, the enterprise class tools can work as well.  The concepts remain the same regardless of the technology that is being used.  As an example, we are currently integrating HP UFT with Jenkins to run our smoke tests after the code is deployed into the test environments.

5-DevOps is just “Infrastructure as code” or automation.  There is a lot of activities that can be automated with DevOps.  There are also shared goals and pain that occurs within the IT lifecycle and those issues must be resolved quickly.

6-DevOps is only for startups.  DevOps is relevant for any IT organization.  It is more important than ever that the established organizations use practices that will enhance the ability to deliver code into production using an effective approach.

Hopefully this will give you a better understanding of some of the myths that exist with DevOps today.  It is important to gain an understanding of DevOps so that you can leverage it for your organization.

If you would like more information on Agile, DevOps or Software Testing, please visit my Software Testing Blog or my Software Testing YouTube Channel.

Ron Wilson