development and operations

thumb|Illustration showing DevOps as the intersection of Development (Software Engineering), Technology Operations and Quality Assurance (QA)|class=skin-invert-image DevOps is the integration and automation of software development and information technology operations. DevOps encompasses necessary tasks of software development and can lead to shortening development time and improving the development life cycle. According to Neal Ford, DevOps, particularly through continuous delivery, employs the "Bring the pain forward" principle, tackling tough tasks early, fostering automation and swift issue detection. Software programmers and architects should use fitness functions to keep their software in check.

Although debated, DevOps is characterized by key principles: shared ownership, workflow automation, and rapid feedback. From an academic perspective, Len Bass, Ingo Weber, and Liming Zhu—three computer science researchers from the CSIRO and the Software Engineering Institute—suggested defining DevOps as "a set of practices intended to reduce the time between committing a change to a system and the change being placed into normal production, while ensuring high quality". However, the term is used in multiple contexts. At its most successful, DevOps is a combination of specific practices, culture change, and tools.