[stevefenton]

DevOps part one was just "developers and operations working more closely together". It only really required the managers to update the goals of the two specilizations to remove the conflict (developers are rewarded for delivering more, operations are rewarded for stability).

Once the research picked up, they started building out a broader picture of what a DevOps organization did and whether those things made them more successful (better at delivering software, more reliable, more profitable, etc).

The Phoenix Project / The Unicorn Project explain the concept by telling a story - they kind of tell the same story, but from different perspectives. There's also Investments Unlimited which takes an even broader view by adding governance, risk, and compliance (but in a way that aligns to DevOps).

In 2023, DevOps is best described by the DORA research (The State of DevOps Report) as it covers technical, cultural, and product concerns that all amplify each other.

[khochesh_kushat]

There was a step in the middle there you missed where it was coopted by software vendors to not be about how you collaborate with others, but which tools you use, and has now become essentially meaningless.

[nicoburns]

The same happened with the concepts of Agile and UX. But of course the true concepts still live on. It's just that everyone wants to sound like they're using best practice techniques even when they're not.

[stevefenton]

Yes, there is that! ;)

[indymike]

Wow, I remember the first exposure I had to the term DevOps was not at all about working closely, it was about replacing admins with code. This made sense at the time because Puppet, Chef, SaltStack and other tools made it seem like you could pull this off...

[morelisp]

Reading this made me ill.