DevOps | Glossary

Definition

DevOps is a software development and delivery process, which emphasizes on communication and collaboration between, product management, software development, and operations professionals.

Origin

The term DevOps was popularized through a series of “devopsdays” starting in 2009 in Belgium. Since then, there have been devopsdays conferences, held in many countries, worldwide. The popularity of DevOps has grown in recent years, inspiring many other tangential initiatives including OpsDev, WinOps and BizDevOps.

Pros

  • Recovery rate from failures is much faster through DevOps model
  • Application development rate is very high in companies through DevOps compared to those who don’t use DevOps
  • The quality is improved drastically, the time and effort spent on unplanned work and bug fixing is reduced
  • Customer experience and satisfaction is high since credibility is maintained by providing them the applications on time.

Cons

  • The main problem with a DevOps team is a risk of security issues. This is because the security team is not integrated with
    DevOps, and they have no idea about the methodologies being used to speed up Application development Process
  • Requires a Major change in mindset of the people and organizational culture, which cannot happen overnight
  • Switching to DevOps from Waterfall is very difficult and often results in failure.

Further Reading

  • “The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World‑Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations”, by Gene Kim, Jez Humble, and Patrick Debois
  • “The Phoenix Project”, by Gene Kim, George Spafford, and Kevin Behr.

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Cadence | Glossary

Definition

The flow of tasks/rhythm of events in a project, is defined as Cadence. Sprints of consistent duration, establish a Cadence for a development effort and the delivery of a viable software product. It establishes a pattern, that the team can follow to understand what they are doing and when it will be completed.

Origin

Cadence is a late Middle English word (in the sense ‘rhythm or metrical beat’): via Old French from Italian Cadenza, based on Latin phrase “Cadere” (to fall’). It was used in the context of software development, in the late 1980’s.

Further Reading

  • “The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development”, by Donald G. Reinertsen.
  • “The Art of doing twice the work in half the time”, by Jeff Sutherland.
  • “Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process”, by Kenneth S. Rubin.
  • “Kanban from the Inside”, by Mike Burrows.
  • “Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business”, by David J. Anderson.

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