DevOps breaks down silos between development and operations—enabling teams to deploy faster, recover quicker, and deliver more reliable software through automation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
From commit to production
Fast feedback is how any system grows quickly. DevOps thrives on continuous feedback at every stage of development—from your IDE to production monitoring to customer insights.
⚡ Instant
⚡ Instant
⚡ Seconds
⚡ Minutes
⚡ Minutes
Hours - Days
Hours - Days
Hours - Days
Days - Weeks
Weeks
The faster you get feedback, the faster you can iterate. Elite teams measure feedback loops in minutes, not days—enabling dramatically higher deployment frequencies and faster recovery times.
Elite deployment frequency
Elite recovery time
Elite failure rate
Source: DORA Research
These principles guide successful DevOps transformations across organizations of all sizes
Break down silos between development, operations, security, and business teams. Create cross-functional teams with shared goals and metrics.
Automate and streamline every phase from development to deployment. Build feedback loops at every stage to catch issues early.
Build security and reliability into every step. Shift left on testing and security. Make systems observable and resilient by design.
Real examples of how DevOps principles transform software delivery
Developer pushes code
Git commit triggers pipeline
Automated tests run
Unit, integration, security
Build artifacts
Docker images, packages
Deploy to staging
Automated deployment
Production release
Blue-green or canary
# terraform/main.tf
resource "aws_instance" "web" {
ami = "ami-0c55b159"
instance_type = "t2.micro"
tags = {
Name = "production-web"
Team = "platform"
}
}Version control your infrastructure just like application code
Build technical knowledge, best practices, and problem-solving skills for all experience levels.
Learn MoreEnsure every engineering team has what they need to support enterprise-level delivery and scale.
Learn MoreBuild a modern software delivery pipeline with these foundational components
Git, GitFlow, trunk-based development. Everything starts with code collaboration.
Automate build, test, and deployment processes for rapid delivery.
Define and provision infrastructure through code for consistency.
Track system health, performance, and user experience in real-time.
ISTE Seal
Level 3 ESSA
Digital Promise
More frequent deployments
Elite performers vs low performers
Faster time to recover
From incidents and outages
Lower change failure rate
Fewer rollbacks and hotfixes
Source: State of DevOps Report 2024
Understanding the culture and practices that transform software delivery
Collaboration between development and operations teams
Automation, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code
Deliver software faster while maintaining reliability
DevOps stands for development and operations and is both a culture and a set of practices aimed at bridging the historic divide between software engineering and IT operations.
A DevOps culture encourages collaboration, continuous improvement and automation to accelerate software delivery while maintaining reliability. It emphasises cross‑functional teams, shared objectives and regular collaboration to break down silos and deliver value to customers.
DevOps is a professional movement that unifies development and operations with the goals of delivering software faster, ensuring quality and enabling continuous improvement.
The foundational tenets that guide DevOps practices
Practical applications across the software lifecycle
Teams work together to define requirements, user stories and architecture. Lean and agile methods help prioritise work and eliminate waste.
Tools: Jira, Trello, Azure DevOps for backlog management and collaboration
Code is integrated and built frequently with automated tests verifying functionality. Version control extends beyond code to infrastructure, configuration and documentation.
Tools: Git, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins
Shift‑left testing means unit, integration, performance and security tests run early and often. Automated testing reduces manual effort and provides quick feedback loops.
Practices: Test-driven development, automated regression testing, continuous testing
CI/CD pipelines automate deployments to various environments ensuring repeatability. Blue/green deployments, canary releases and feature flags reduce risk when introducing changes.
Tools: Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Ansible
Continuous monitoring of performance, logs, user behaviour and business metrics ensures issues are detected early. Customer feedback loops and analytics drive product improvements.
Tools: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Datadog
DevSecOps integrates security at every stage. Automated vulnerability scans, static code analysis and compliance checks are built into pipelines.
Focus: Protecting source code, credentials, and implementing automated compliance checks
How leading organizations implement DevOps principles
Collaborated with IBM to build a predictive maintenance platform integrating data from vehicle sensors, maintenance records and environmental factors.
Outcomes:
Adopted DevOps tools including Jira, Bitbucket and Bamboo to build a comprehensive CI/CD pipeline automating code integration, testing and deployment.
Outcomes:
Integrated UrbanCode and cloud solutions to transform their release process and dramatically reduce testing time.
Outcomes:
Partnered with Deloitte to adopt automated pipelines, CI/CD, infrastructure as code and DevSecOps practices.
Outcomes:
The DORA metrics for quantifying performance
Understanding whether DevOps efforts are effective requires measurement. The DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) metrics are widely used to quantify performance.
Research shows that high performers achieve both high speed and high stability—speed and stability are not trade‑offs. Focus on trends rather than absolute numbers and align metrics with organizational goals.
How often deployments occur. High performers deploy multiple times per day, enabling rapid feature delivery and faster feedback.
Time from code commit to running in production. Shorter lead times indicate efficient pipelines and processes.
Percentage of deployments causing incidents. Lower rates indicate better testing, quality assurance and deployment practices.
How quickly service is restored after failure. Faster recovery demonstrates effective monitoring, incident response and rollback capabilities.
Understanding the relationship between DevOps and SRE
DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) are closely related but not identical. Google describes it as: "class SRE implements interface DevOps"
While DevOps is a broad philosophy uniting development and operations, SRE focuses on ensuring reliability and scalability through engineering practices.
DevOps is more than a buzzword—it's a cultural and technical movement that changes how organizations build, deliver and maintain software.
Successful DevOps adoption is less about specific tools and more about cultivating a culture of shared responsibility, continuous improvement, learning and innovation. Organizations that embrace these principles position themselves to adapt quickly to change, deliver value faster and build resilient systems that delight customers.