What is DevOps?
A DevOps team is responsible for optimizing and streamlining the software development process. This is done to essentially enable rapid delivery of high-quality software while ensuring that the systems and infrastructure are stable, secure, and able to handle the expected load.
You could say that the goal of DevOps is basically to improve the speed and velocity of new software that other engineers can deliver. DevOps and DX are sometimes used together where DX is more about giving the engineers a nice, beautiful developer experience when writing code.
Some of the key responsibilities of a DevOps team include:
Automating the software development process, from code integration to deployment and testing.
Building, configuring and maintaining the infrastructure that supports the software.
Monitoring the performance of the software and the systems it runs on, and using that data to make improvements.
Managing the configuration of the systems and applications to ensure that they are secure and compliant with regulatory requirements.
Collaborating with development and operations teams to identify and resolve issues that arise during the software development process.
DevOps teams typically use a wide range of tools and technologies to support their work, including version control systems, continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) tools, cloud computing platforms, containerization and orchestration tools, monitoring and logging tools, and more.
The DevOps approach is becoming an industry standard and is becoming a must-have for most development teams. It aims to reduce friction between different teams, speed up time to market, and maximize customer satisfaction with the software.
How should DevOps use OKRs?
Since a DevOps team is typically placed within an organization as a smaller part of a software engineering team, their goals are shared.
The purpose of software teams is to deliver software that users get value from. DevOps is a function that's put into the world to minimize the time it takes to deliver that value.
And so it makes sense that DevOps share goals with software teams and typically also product or platform teams.
In the section above, you'll find OKRs related to these teams but also the types of companies that DevOps teams exist within.