DevOps has been a recognisable term for more than a decade, but it seems that many individuals and businesses still don’t quite understand its precise definition.
A simple LinkedIn search will throw up tens of thousands of individual profiles incorrectly citing the term somewhere within their job title. It isn’t only individuals who are misusing the term though as, at any one time, there is at least a small handful of employers advertising vacant roles within their organisations with titles such as ‘DevOps engineer’ or ‘DevOps specialist’.
OK, so what does it really mean?
DevOps certainly isn’t a job title, a team name, or a piece of software. Instead, it is a collection of practices which seek to inspire and embolden continuous and consistent integration within the process of production. It is only now, more than 10 years after the term first came into being, that the industry is beginning to fully embrace the DevOps mindset.
Origins of the DevOps mindset
The term was created from a need to manage the large scale web services like Google, who were quickly establishing themselves as web giants in an increasingly expansive digital sphere. As soon as a website begins to involve many thousands of computers all around the globe, logging in and performing a simple upgrade becomes impossible. When operating on such a large scale, automation is no longer a choice; it is a necessity.
Large web companies began to realise that development simply could not be removed from its code operation because processes move far too slowly. If they wanted to maintain growth and continue to evolve, efficient teamwork and meeting different skillsets were paramount.
Every professional web development company in London, including the one that can be found here https://www.redsnapper.net/, understand that DevOps is a practice and not simply a toolkit. The software is in much safer hands when team members with complementary skill sets in operations and development are working seamlessly in unison.
The importance of collaboration
Although, as this Forbes article explains, many companies are struggling to adopt an agile DevOps ecosystem, kick-starting the process in the correct way is crucial.
Ultimately, a final product is only as good as the experience it provides. It may incorporate a variety of impressive features but if they don’t all work together to deliver a superior user experience, it is impossible to declare it successful.
