DevOps Services And Solutions

As DevOps is intended to be a cross-functional mode of working, those who practice the methodology use different sets of tools—referred to as “toolchain”—rather than a single one. These tool. chains are expected to fit into one or more of the following categories, reflective of key aspects of the development and delivery process.

1. Coding – code development and review, source code management tools, code merging.
2. Building – continuous integration tools, build status.
3. Testing – continuous testing tools that provide quick and timely feedback on business risks.
4. Packaging – artifact repository, application pre-deployment staging.
5. Releasing – change management, release approvals, release automation.
6. Configuring – infrastructure configuration and management, infrastructure as code tools.
7. Monitoring – applications performance monitoring, end-user experience.

Some categories are more essential in a DevOps tool chain than others; especially continuous integration (e.g. Jenkins, Gitlab, BitBucket pipelines) and infrastructure as code (e.g., Ansible, Puppet).

Forsgren et al. found that IT performance is strongly correlated with DevOps practices like source code management and continuous delivery.

Agile

The motivations for what has become modern DevOps and several standard DevOps practices such as automated build and test, continuous integration, and continuous delivery originated in the Agile world, which dates (informally) to the 1990s, and formally to 2001. Agile development teams using methods such as Extreme Programming couldn't "satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software unless they subsumed the operations / infrastructure responsibilities associated with their applications, many of which they automated. Because Scrum emerged as the dominant Agile framework in the early 2000s and it omitted the engineering practices that were part of many Agile teams, the movement to automate operations / infrastructure functions splintered from Agile and expanded into what has become modern DevOps. Today, DevOps focuses on the deployment of developed software, whether it is developed via Agile or other methodologies.

ArchOps

ArchOps presents an extension for DevOps practice, starting from software architecture artifacts, instead of source code, for operation deployment. ArchOps states that architectural models are first-class entities in software development, deployment, and operations.

TestOps

TestOps is often considered a subset of DevOps, focusing on accelerating the practice of software testing within agile development methodologies. It includes the operations of test planning, managing test data, controlling changes to tests, organizing tests, managing test status, and gaining insights from testing activities to inform status and process improvements. 

Continuous delivery

Continuous delivery and DevOps have common goals and are often used in conjunction, but there are subtle differences.

While continuous delivery is focused on automating the processes in software delivery, DevOps also focuses on the organizational change to support great collaboration between the many functions involved.

DevOps and continuous delivery share a common background in agile methods and lean thinking: small and frequent changes with focused value to the end customer. Lean management and continuous delivery are fundamental to delivering value faster, in a sustainable way. Continuous delivery focuses on making sure the software is always in a releasable state throughout its lifecycle. This makes it cheaper and less risky to deliver the software.

Improved collaboration and communication both between and within organizational teams can help achieve faster time to market, with reduced risks.

DataOps

The application of continuous delivery and DevOps to data analytics has been termed DataOps. DataOps seeks to integrate data engineering, data integration, data quality, data security, and data privacy with operations. It applies principles from DevOps, Agile Development and the statistical process control, used in lean manufacturing, to improve the cycle time of extracting value from data analytics.

Site-reliability engineering

In 2003, Google developed site reliability engineering (SRE), an approach for releasing new features continuously into large-scale high-availability systems while maintaining high-quality end-user experience. While SRE predates the development of DevOps, they are generally viewed as being related to each other.

Systems administration

DevOps is often viewed as an approach to applying systems administration work to cloud technology.

WinOps

WinOps is the term used for DevOps practices for a Microsoft-centric view.