IT organizations are always striving to be better, be faster, and to deliver the technology that their customers want.  DevOps is a philosophy that helps them to do that by developing a set of principles and other criteria to help them work together with all those involved to deliver a product that is useful, workable and collaborative.  Following are six of the main principles they have developed.

Principle 1

Customer-Centric Action

If you release a product, and it does not work, you depend on your customers to tell you about it.  Customers have no qualms in letting producers know this, but the feedback time is imperative.  If you do not hear the complaints until months later, your application may fail.

So, to prevent this, DevOps believes that short feedback times with real customers, since all the business of building technology should and does center around clients.  Companies who adhere to this principle are required to have the fortitude to do lean roll outs and to work continuously toward innovating and improving their product.  It also requires that when one thing no longer works, the company must be flexible enough to continue investing in that product or service that will right the wrong.

Principle 2

Create with the End in Mind

Attention must be paid to the idea that products are built and made for real customers.  It takes every individual involved to work as a team, rather than for his or her own role, to make the whole product the best it can be.  The process should not begin with the beginning but should encompass the whole idea from conceptualization to completion.

Principle 3

End-To-End Responsibility

The organization of a company which spotlights teams as separate entities will no longer work.  Collaboration is key and the item created and sold to the customers remain under the control of the group which created.  The group is multi-functional and can proved performance and support until that product is re-engineered or replaced with a better product.  This increases the responsibility of the team, but also the quality of the technology produced.

Principle 4

Cross-Functional Autonomous Teams

As mentioned above the team will be responsible for the technology through its entire work life.  This entails a set of skills for all team members not just specializing in one or two areas.

Principle 5

Continuous Improvement

Companies need to be flexible and will to change to fit the circumstances.  The end goal is too providing better products, decrease waste, increase speed and ease of delivery and to always learn from failure.  The need to always being on the cutting edge of developing new and products is always at the forefront.

Principle 6

Automate Everything You Can

Spending time doing the same task over and over again is wasteful, especially if it can be automated by process.  In recent years the infrastructure has changed to the point that automatic integration is now available and can also be applied to the services provided to the customer.