DEVOPSdigest

DEVOPSdigest asked experts from across the industry to define what DevOps means to them. The goal is to show just how many varied ideas are connected with the concept of DevOps, and in the process learn a little more what DevOps is all about. The third installment shows the impact of DevOps on both Dev and Ops team members.

Start with 17 Ways to Define DevOps - Part 1

Start with 17 Ways to Define DevOps - Part 2

8. EMPOWERING DEVELOPERS

DevOps takes away the friction between software developers and a traditional ops team by entrusting developers with responsibility for the products they build. It's not about giving developers more work to do — it's about giving them the power to get the whole job done rather than a small portion of it.
Ryan Park
Principal Infrastructure Engineer, Runscope(link is external)

DevOps is a philosophy that places value on developers owning responsibility for service operations to enable a high velocity of infrastructure change without sacrificing service quality. It's less an organizational structure and more of a cultural transformation. By embedding operational discipline in the development process, technology-driven companies deliver better products faster. It's the only way for teams to deliver modern apps at scale.
Dan Turchin
VP of Product, Big Panda(link is external)

9. EMPOWERING OPERATIONS

I see DevOps as official recognition that the classic model makes operations people frustrated with software developers, and vice versa. People whose natural instinct is to fix things rather than point fingers will not be shy about looking over the shoulder of the person in the other chair, and collaborating to remove obstacles. DevOps makes that part of an actual job description, rather than an unrecognized reality.
Thomas Stocking
Director of Sales Engineering, GroundWork(link is external)

10. CROSS-FUNCTIONALITY

We can talk about agility, automation and collaboration til the cows come home, but DevOps is about people being generalists vs. specialists. Having a broad understanding of how to build and support applications, networks, databases and storage will become invaluable in cloud environments where nearly every service is built using APIs vs. bespoke code. When something breaks or goes wrong you shouldn't need experts to troubleshoot different areas of your environment, you need generalists who can leverage the insight that their APM, NPM and ITOA toolsets can provide.
Steve Burton
Chairman, VP of Product Marketing, Moogsoft(link is external)

No matter what exact definition and flavor of DevOps an organization is following, I think a key element of DevOps is to have developers who act and think like ops people, and vice versa. Developers who are on-call and held accountable for ensuring that their code doesn't just do well in the lab environment, but is easy to operate and doesn't break under real-world circumstances will produce better applications.
Sven Dummer
Senior Director of Product Marketing, Loggly(link is external)

11. BREAKING DOWN SILOS

DevOps is an amalgam of strategy, culture, methodology, architecture and technology that enables dev teams to break down silos and cumbersome frameworks in teams, systems and tech so that they can ship whatever they want whenever they want with higher quality and lower cost.
Steven Anderson
CEO, Clutch(link is external)

DevOps means mitigating any and all constraints in order to roll out high-quality, high-performance software, faster, regardless of platform. Traditionally, mobile/distributed teams work in very different silos from mainframe teams. Each with their own distinct culture. Unfortunately, the characteristics of mainframe systems and culture can cause an overall software development effort to encounter slowdowns, or even come to a screeching halt. Fortunately, mainframe ISVs are making tremendous strides in modernizing and evolving these systems for non-mainframe experts, enabling a faster, more agile platform that can keep up with the pace of DevOps while nurturing innovation.
Christopher O'Malley
President and CEO, Compuware(link is external)

Devops is about driving application transformation. Making things and people work not only as "islands" but a cool ecosystem of software development and infrastructure that is fueled by a passionate team attitude.
Stacy Gorkoff
VP, Strategic Marketing, INETCO(link is external)

To achieve DevOps success, organizations must shift from silo-based management of their application infrastructures to a collaborative approach that offers end-to-end, correlated visibility to all stakeholders. This will enable faster and more accurate problem resolution, improved end-user satisfaction , rapid optimization and enhanced planning to scale the business for the future.
Arun Aravamudhan
Senior Product Architect, eG Innovations(link is external)

Read 17 Ways to Define DevOps - Part 4, outlining the many approaches and tools associated with DevOps.