Gartner says DevOps Is:

“a change in IT culture, focusing on rapid IT service delivery through the adoption of agile, lean practices in the context of a system-oriented approach. DevOps emphasizes people (and culture), and seeks to improve collaboration between operations and development teams. DevOps implementations utilize technology— especially automation tools that can leverage an increasingly programmable and dynamic infrastructure from a life cycle perspective.”

Gartner has published several whitepapers on different aspects of what DevOps is, including tools and best practices. They are a consistent source of high quality analysis and provide business insights across the board. With the emergence of DevOps they have shown a strong interest in providing the right information for DevOps decision making. 

Gartner nods at a couple of the key movements / practices that have contributed to DevOps thinking. Many, Gartner included, believe that DevOps is as an extension of Agile and Lean Manufacturing. DevOps as a natural extension of Agile and lean is a common thread when one explores the origins of the practice of DevOps. 

Where Agile focuses on the core SLDC, prescribing Ways of Working and iterations that guide the rhythm / cadence of teams building and testing software, DevOps focuses on extending the ideas of transparency, single item flow (flow in general), iterative work cycles beyond the core SDLC and software development teams, including activities and skills traditionally considered part of IT Operations. 

Gartner's read is aligned with many others in the industry that believe that DevOPs is more than just new tools and cloud adoption. 

Important points: culture, collaboration, technology, tools, infrastructure, evolution of existing concepts

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Get another opinion from Jez Humble on what DevOps is in our next article in this series.