Page - 28 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

28 F. Faber 2 WhatIs DevOps? The term DevOps consist of nothing more than the contraction of the words: Development and Operations. DevOps started in 2009 with the DevOps Days, a conferenceorganizedby Patrick Dubois [2]. Althoughmanyhave tried to come up with a definition for DevOps, there is not one universally accepted definition. The DevOpsAgileSkillsAssociation(DASA)hasformulatedsixprincipleswhichcover mostdefinitionsofDevOps. 1. Customer-CentricAction 2. Create with theEnd inMind 3. End-to-EndResponsibility 4. Cross-FunctionalAutonomousTeams 5. ContinuousImprovement 6. AutomateEverythingYouCan[3] Thesix principleshelpunderstandwhatDevOpsreally is about. 2.1 Customer-CentricAction DevOps is usually mentioned together with Agile because they share some core ideas.TheAgileManifesto[4]showsawayofworkinginwhichasmall incremental pieceofsoftwareaddsvaluefor thecustomer.DevOpsbuildsonthesameprinciples byputting thecustomer in thecenterof the action.DevOps teamsworkdirectly for thecustomerandshouldbaseall theiractivitieson themindset that theyshouldadd valuefor thecustomer. Tobeabletoaccomplishthis, it is inevitabletohavefeedbackfromthecustomer. Thereshouldbeashort feedbackloopwhere thecustomercan influencetheactions of the team. Teams can experimentwith new features for services. With a properly implemented feedback loop, customers can give quick feedback on the usage of these features. 2.2 Createwith theEndinMind The scope of work within DevOps teams has changed.Before DevOps, the wall of confusionbetween Developmentand Operationspreventedengineers to work with the scope of the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Development created software and ceased after tests were successfully executed. Operations pickedthesoftwareupfordeploymentonproductionwithsomeknowledgeonwhat happenedbefore they got their handson the software. With DevOps, Development andOperationsexpertiseshouldbepresent ina team.ADevOpsteamshould invest ina processwhere theyowntheentireSDLCofa functionalservice.