Ramkumar Ramachandran, Head – Quality & Testing, Groupe Renault, busts some DevOps myths.

Well, DevOps is the new buzz. You know about DevOps and that’s why you are here to read this article, curiously! But, I’m here to tell what DevOps is not.

DevOps is not a technology, it’s a methodology!

DevOps more addresses the need to have a good handshake between the Development Team and IT Team. So DevOps is more a framework that creates a smooth interaction between various departments, including Development & Operations.

Is it agile or DevOps?

Well, that’s an absurd question. Agile goes hand-in-hand with DevOps. ‘Fail fast’ is the theme of DevOps and agile. So, development releases build fast, realises the results fast and fixes the issues fast. This means agile and DevOps co-exist and are not choices. (Theoretically, you can have legacy waterfall in DevOps, but that’s like 1000 cc engine for bullock cart!)

DevOps decreases production cost

I’m sorry, this is not the case necessarily. The teams should mature the practices of DevOps to get significant RoI. Initially, the cost actually increases, due to the investment in a cultural shift into DevOps. Upon consistent practice, the first gain that is received is business getting a lead in the market with quick deployment. The time-to-market (TTM) is the significant gain that comes first. Upon stabilising the practices, you start seeing lesser effort for each deployment.

DevOps is more to do with IT

Yes, you are almost right. The crux of DevOps lies in continuous integration, continuous delivery, and cloud infrastructure. This could mean that IT plays a significant role in DevOps practices. But, this doesn’t mean the development role is insignificant. Development teams need to be agile, develop secure code and automate almost all tests.

UAutomation is not mandatory in DevOps

Absolutely wrong. To get best DevOps result, automation needs to start from unit testing. Automation needs to continue for automatic build upon checking in the unit-tested code.  This certified build needs to be tested through effective test automation and later deployed in production.

Should I get certified for DevOps?

It really doesn’t matter. DevOps is more a hands-on model where the devil is in the details. You need to have the right environment, right tools, right cloud infrastructure for successful DevOps rollout. If you are already hands-on, DevOps certification can be an ‘endorsement of existing skill’. But, doing a certification alone doesn’t help you at all.

DevOps is pretty new concept

Well, that’s the last myth to be broken. Many disciplined organisations had already a good relationship with IT and was sailing smooth in deliveries. The DevOps medicine is for ensuring this understanding consistently and stop the blame game of ‘It works here, I don’t know why it does work there’ stuff.

I would like to give due credit to Gene Kim for his contribution in his business novel The Phoenix Project (with co-authors) that really inspired many like me.

Happy DevOps-ing!

This article was originally published on LinkedIn, and edited for web by Cecilia Rehn.