What is DevOps? Definition, Lifecycle, Best Practices, & Tools

We’ve seen a huge explosion of interest in DevOps over the last few years. But for people who are new to these ideas, it’s not always obvious what DevOps entails and what the benefits are, particularly in larger environments. 

So, what is DevOps all about? And what do you need to know to succeed? In this blog, you’ll get a breakdown of how DevOps works, its benefits, and the best practices and tools that help teams build and deploy software with speed and confidence. 

What is DevOps & How Does it Work?

DevOps — short for development and operations — is a set of practices, principles, and tools that unite software development and IT operations together to deliver applications faster, more reliably, and at a higher quality.

At its core, DevOps breaks down silos between development and IT operations teams by promoting automation, collaboration, and shared responsibility to shorten the DevOps lifecycle. A DevOps engineer automates workflows and integrates tools and environments to support continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD), so code changes are automatically built, tested, and deployed with minimal effort. 

As DevOps looks different for every organization, it is hard to strictly define DevOps. But that’s a good thing, because it lets DevOps evolve with new technologies and best practices instead of being locked into a fixed model. 

Why Does DevOps Matter?

DevOps is important because it helps organizations deliver software that is secure, reliable, and consistent — with greater velocity. By aligning development and IT, teams can automate repetitive tasks, improve collaboration, and respond quickly to changing business needs

With DevOps, organizations can: 

Deliver Updates Faster with Fewer Errors

Automation sits at the heart of DevOps practices — it’s what turns collaboration and continuous delivery into action. By automating repetitive work across development and deployment, teams spend less time on manual fixes and more on innovation. CI/CD pipelines put this into motion, automatically building, testing, and deploying code. 

Together, automation and CI/CD help teams deliver faster, more reliable releases while ensuring every change meets quality and security standards. 

Improve Collaboration & Visibility

DevOps builds a culture of collaboration and trust. Instead of development, QA, security, and operations working in silos, everyone shares visibility across the lifecycle, from code changes to testing results and deployment.  

When teams see the same data and goals, handoffs are smoother and progress is easier to track. 

Enhance Compliance & Security 

Security and compliance belong in every stage of the DevOps lifecycle, not as an afterthought at the end of deployment. This approach, commonly referred to as DevSecOps, extends DevOps even further by embedding security into daily workflows through “shift-left” practices and infrastructure as code (IaC). These methods allow organizations to automate compliance checks, enforce policies consistently, and quickly remediate vulnerabilities before they reach production.  

By identifying issues early and automating remediation, teams save significant time and reduce the high costs of late-stage fixes or security incidents. 

Stay Agile in Response to Market Changes 

In a fast-changing environment, agility is key. DevOps helps teams pivot quickly — whether that means rolling out a new feature, scaling infrastructure, or fixing an emerging issue. Continuous monitoring and feedback loops give teams real-time insights, helping them adjust strategies and deliver value faster.

What Is the DevOps Lifecycle?

The DevOps lifecycle is a continuous process that allows teams to plan, build, test, deploy, and monitor software efficiently. It combines collaboration and automation to keep development and IT operations aligned to help teams deliver updates quickly, securely, and with greater agility.
 

DevOps teams use (CI/CD) practices to code, test, release, monitor, and iterate software for improvements. This creates a seamless loop where each stage connects to the next, allowing for faster delivery and continuous improvement across the software lifecycle. 

Here are the key components of the DevOps lifecycle in action: 

• Planning: The development team collaborates with stakeholders to gather requirements, set goals, and plan new software features or updates. Security and compliance considerations begin here to ensure requirements are understood early. 
• Development: Developers write and test code for those features using version control system, committing changes to a shared repository to ensure visibility and collaboration. 
• Continuous Integration (CI): A CI/CD tool automatically detects new code changes, builds the application, and runs tests to ensure compatibility and stability. This helps catch conflicts or issues early, before they affect the wider codebase. 
• Continuous Delivery (CD): The CI/CD tool then packages validated builds and delivers them to a staging or production environment. Depending on the workflow, deployment may be triggered automatically or manually after review. 
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Infrastructure components — such as servers, networks, firewalls, configurations, and edge devices — are managed and provisioned through code. This ensures consistency, repeatability, and easier scaling across environments. 
• Monitoring & Feedback: Automated monitoring tools track application performance and usage in real time. Insights and alerts from these tools are shared with the development team to identify bugs, performance issues, or opportunities for improvement. 
• Iteration: The team reviews feedback from users and stakeholders to guide the next round of features or updates. The DevOps cycle then loops back to the beginning — continuously improving software quality, performance, and reliability. 

The Critical Role of Security and Compliance 

Security and compliance are essential to high performing DevOps practices. Rather than treating them as separate checkpoints at the end of delivery, modern teams integrate both throughout the DevOps lifecycle. This approach strengthens reliability and reduces risk by building security into development and operations processes from the start. 

Organizations apply automated controls and policies, as well as conduct testing to ensure that applications and infrastructure adhere to security and regulatory standards. Techniques such as shift-left security, automated code scanning, and infrastructure as code (IaC) help teams identify vulnerabilities and misconfigurations early. This reduces manual work and prevents costly last-minute fixes. 

By embedding security and compliance into delivery workflows, teams gain faster and safer release cycles. The result is software that is not only delivered quickly but also designed with protection and consistency at its core.  

Common DevOps Methodologies & Principles

DevOps draws strength from well-established methodologies and principles that shape how teams deliver value. Agile brings adaptability, Lean reduces waste, CI/CD accelerates releases, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)ensures systems stay stable at scale. These approaches can each define how teams plan, build, test, and operate software in a DevOps environment.

Agile

Agile is a software development methodology built around flexibility, collaboration, and iterative improvement. Instead of long release cycles, it focuses on short, frequent iterations (sprints) that deliver working software quickly and respond to user feedback in real time. 

In a DevOps environment, Agile principles help teams: 

• Plan smaller, manageable work units that can be tested and deployed faster. 
• Improve collaboration between developers, testers, and operations teams. 
• Adapt quickly to changing business or customer needs without disrupting existing workflows. 

Agile lays the cultural foundation for DevOps — encouraging transparency, shared responsibility, and a focus on delivering continuous value. 

Lean

Lean thinking originated in manufacturing, but has been adapted to software delivery with the goal of minimizing waste and maximizing value. In DevOps, this approach ensures every process, tool, and decision directly contributes to delivering customer value. 

Key Lean principles that align with DevOps include: 

• Eliminate waste: Automate repetitive tasks and remove unnecessary steps in development pipelines. 
• Optimize flow: Streamline workflows from code commit to production release.
• Continuous improvement: Encourage teams to reflect regularly and improve both tools and processes. 

By applying Lean principles, DevOps teams can deliver faster, reduce costs, and focus their energy on innovation rather than maintenance. 

CI/CD

The technical backbone of DevOps, CI/CD approaches the process as a continuous cycle of building, testing, and deploying software. Continuous Integration (CI) ensures that code changes are automatically built and tested whenever developers commit to a shared repository. This reduces integration issues and maintains code quality.  

CI goes alongside with Continuous Delivery (CD), extending automation to the deployment and release process. CD automates deployment to staging or production environments, allowing teams to release updates safely and frequently. Together, CI/CD helps DevOps team: 

• Detect and fix issues early in the development process. 
• Deliver reliable, production-ready code faster. 
• Shorten release cycles and reduce manual effort. 

Together, CI/CD pipelines enable the automation and consistency that DevOps relies on to achieve speed, quality, and scalability. 

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is about keeping systems fast, stable, and reliable as they grow more complex. It combines software engineering with IT operations, focusing on automation and measurement instead of manual fixes. 

Here’s how SRE supports DevOps: 

• Automates operations tasks: Automates routine tasks such as deployment, monitoring, change management, and incident response through code rather than manual effort. 
• Sets clear reliability goals: Teams use Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service Level Indicators (SLIs) to measure performance and uptime. 
• Balances speed and stability: SRE helps teams move fast and ship new features without worrying about breaking what already works. To manage this balance, they use error budgets that specify how much risk or downtime is acceptable. 

In short, SRE keeps the “Ops” in DevOps running smoothly. It ensures systems stay healthy, scalable, and ready for the next release. 

DevOps Best Practices 

The best DevOps practices focus on building a culture of teamwork, automation, learning, and continuous improvement. Successful DevOps teams plant these values to accelerate software delivery while ensuring high quality and reliability. Frameworks like CAMS and The Three Ways of DevOps offer proven models for building efficient, scalable systems. 

CAMS DevOps Model 

Coined by John Willis and Damon Edwards in 2010, CAMS (Culture, Automation, Measurement, and Sharing) defines the core values behind successful DevOps adoption:  

• Culture: DevOps thrives when teams collaborate, trust each other, and share responsibility. By working together to deliver results rather than handing off tasks, and learning from mistakes without blaming each other, teams can drive lasting innovation and stability. 
• Automation: Automation underpins speed and consistency. Treating infrastructure as code ensures reliability, reduces human error, and gives teams more time to focus on innovation. Self-service infrastructure also minimizes bottlenecks and accelerates experimentation. 
• Measurement: You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Automated systems and clear DevOps metrics and KPIs help teams identify bottlenecks, validate performance, and make objective, data-driven decisions. 
• Sharing: Knowledge sharing fuels efficiency and alignment. Reusing code, sharing tools, and contributing to open source or internal repositories eliminates duplication and strengthens team empathy and understanding. 

While the CAMS model is a strong starting point, it does not always resonate with senior leaders who oversee multiple teams and departments. 

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The Three Ways of DevOps 

In 2012, CTO, researcher, and author Gene Kim introduced The Three Ways, and while there have been refinements over time, the core concepts remain sound and do tend to resonate better with senior managers. 

1. Systems Thinking and Flow: Focus on optimizing the entire system, not just individual components. While this can be difficult in large enterprises, it becomes achievable by automating processes, measuring results, and sharing insights. 
2. Amplify Feedback Loops: Create short, fast feedback loops across development, testing, and operations. This allows teams to catch issues early, respond quickly, and continuously improve processes. 
3. Continuous Experimentation and Learning: Foster a culture of innovation through ongoing safe-to-fail experimentation and learning. Both leaders and managers play a critical role in creating this by rewarding learning and ensuring teams feel empowered and engaged. 

What Are the Challenges to Adopting DevOps?

Being aware of common challenges to adopting DevOps helps teams plan effectively and implement it successfully. Here are the most common challenges organizations face: 

• Skill gaps: DevOps requires a mix of development, IT operations, automation, and security expertise. Many teams lack hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code (IaC), or automated testing. This can slow adoption and reduce confidence in new processes. To close this gap, it is important to invest in training and creating a culture where learning and collaboration are ongoing. 
• Tool sprawl & complexity: DevOps depends on automation, but using too many disconnected tools can cause confusion and inefficiency. Teams juggling separate systems for version control, testing, deployment, and monitoring often lose visibility and consistency. Simplifying and integrating your toolchain can help streamline workflows. 
• Legacy systems: Older or monolithic systems don’t always fit modern DevOps workflows. They’re harder to automate, scale, or integrate with cloud-native environments. Modernize gradually through containerization or IaC, letting teams maintain uptime while improving agility. 
• Security & compliance issues: Most organizations follow a traditional approach where security checks are bolted on late in the development cycle, slowing releases. DevOps teams must “shift security left” by embedding automated security scans, policy enforcement, and compliance checks throughout the development lifecycle. 
• Organizational silos: Cultural resistance is often the hardest challenge to overcome. Development, IT, and security teams may have different priorities, tools, and performance metrics, which creates friction and slowsdown delivery. 

Essential DevOps Tools

A successful DevOps setup relies on a well-integrated set of tools that supports key DevOps practices. Here are some of the main tools for building a strong DevOps system: 

DevOps: The Key to Organizational Success 

Forward-looking organizations see DevOps as more than a process—it’s a strategic enabler for speed, agility, and resilience. When automation and collaboration work together, teams can innovate faster and respond to change with confidence. Learn more in the latest State of DevOps report. 

For teams looking to scale DevOps maturity, tools like Puppet Enterprise Advanced make it easier to automate infrastructure, enforce compliance, and maintain consistency across even the most complex hybrid environments.  

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