DevOps
Anyone out there practicing DevOps?
Forum Discussion
Hi,
According to my current understanding...
'DevOps', like 'Agile', 'Framework' and other terms that are overused, is too overloaded with the (internal) definitions and this must be clarified on the start before proceeding further.
For example, I think that the initial idea of DevOps was to establish communication between all participants of the software production line, so that, for example, Development is aware about the problems that Support is presented with. Such awareness might help to understand why Support asks for some things and why it is asked that these things are implemented in a certain way which, from Development point of view, might be not ideal. Alternatively, Support becomes more aware about what, why and how is implemented by Development and why not all requests from Support may be implemented in the asked way.
This idea, to me personally, seems to be a logical and reasonable one.
I also met with the (over-improved?) implementation of the above idea when it was required that all members of the given team can do the same work: develop, test, manage environment. To some initial extent this might work. But in a greater extent, I am far not sure that this is the good idea - every job has its specifics and, for example, while developer can create good unit tests, he can be far less aware about the specifics of the functional UI testing or database performance analysis and improvement. For me this looks like the case with the car garage staff: while in general all mechanics are aware about mechanics, engines, electrical part and painting, I never heard about the requirement that all mechanics in the garage must be equally perfect in, say, engine repair and car painting. And do this for both small cars and trucks. (And if I knew such a garage, I'm pretty sure I would not visit it because I do not believe that one can be perfect in such different skills (even despite the fact that they all are about car repair). And if he is not perfect in any given skill, what is the reason for me to ask for his service? )
Just my current vision based on the latest experience...
Good feedback.
I can't find anything you've said to argue with - especially the view company's have towards generalizations; testing, dev, support. I've found silos at every company I've worked. And there's a reason. The software is generally so complex that everyone can't know everything.
I spoke with a recruiter recently and got the impression he was guiding me in the DevOps direction because he has a client with a vacancy which uses some of the DevOps buzzwords.
Figured I'd throw my 2 cents in here. My husband has a devops role, but at his company, this simply means he is knowledgeable about both operations (servers, networking, sysadmin stuff) and development. He works between those 2 teams, helping coordinate, avoid blame wars, and get problems fixed that need a multi-team approach. Devops doesn't really relate to testing, from what I can tell. It is the new "in" term, though, and as such probably means different things to different people. I feel like the intent was to have people who had skills in 2 areas, who could tackle problems that related to both areas with a more well-rounded perspective.
OK... I'm going to give a Kudos to the original poster but, can I say, that this entire thread is an excellent thread talking about buzzwords, about "trends" in development and testing, and how it really all comes down to people doing the work that they are skilled to do.
Well done, community, well done...Nice example, thank you for it. While I think that it is in line with the general 'establish communication' approach, it also provides a good example of (possible) practical implementation.
P.S. As we are talking here about generic things, maybe some of you will express his/her opinion in the https://community.smartbear.com/t5/TestLeft/Discussion-Do-you-need-to-organize-Test-Left-tests-for-execution/td-p/119738 thread (created, probably, in the not that popular yet section of the forum) ?
