Engineering DevOps: From Chaos to Continuous Improvement ... and Beyond

by Marc Hornbeek

Do you want to know “How to do DevOps”? Are you “doing DevOps” but not satisfied with the results you are getting? DevOps is complex. It does not come with a prescription, installation guide, user’s manual, or maintenance manual. It doesn’t even have a standard definition! This book is unique in that it provides a step-by-step engineering prescription that can be followed by leaders and practitioners to understand, assess, define, implement, operationalize, and evolve DevOps for their organization. It provides a unique collection of engineering practices and solutions for DevOps. By confining the scope of the content of the book to the level of engineering practices, the content is applicable to the widest possible range of implementations. This book was born out of a desire to help others do DevOps, combined with a burning personal frustration. The frustration comes from hearing leaders and practitioners say, “We think we are doing DevOps, but we are not getting the business results we had expected.” There are many documented references, courses, and other sources of information that explain a multitude of different aspects of DevOps, but there is not a comprehensive step-by-step prescriptive guide that details how to engineer a DevOps solution for any organization given any starting point. Engineering DevOps takes a strategic approach, applies engineering implementation discipline, and focuses operational expertise to define and accomplish specific goals for each leg of your DevOps journey. This book guides the reader through a journey from defining an engineering strategy for DevOps to implementing The Three Ways of DevOps maturity using engineering The First Way (called “Continuous Flow”) to The Second Way (called “Continuous Feedback”) and finally The Third Way (called “Continuous Improvement”). This book is deliberately intended to be a guide that will continue to be relevant over time as your specific DevOps and DevOps more generally evolves. This book is organized as an engineering reference guide presented in five parts as Part What Is Engineering DevOps and Why Is It Important? explains DevOps engineering concepts and terms, a DevOps Engineering Blueprint is presented as a useful, practical “big-picture” reference for discussing engineering the major parts of DevOps. “Nine Pillars of DevOps,” describes a classification of DevOps practices practices that can be readily applied when engineering DevOps implementations and the benefits of taking an engineering approach to engineering DevOps are presented. Part Engineering People, Processes and Technologies for DevOps provides a comprehensive explanation of recommended engineering practices for the higher levels of the DevOps Engineering Blueprint. Part Engineering Applications, Pipelines, and Infrastructures Engineered for DevOps provides a comprehensive explanation of recommended engineering practices for the lower levels of the DevOps Engineering Blueprint. Part DevOps Seven-Step Transformation Engineering Blueprint provides a description and tools for my approach to realize and evolve DevOps. This part includes a discussion of “Beyond Continuous Improvement”—a look at emerging technologies that are shaping DevOps in the future and how you can prepare your DevOps and yourself for the future. This part also includes a discussion of how to set up an effective DevOps engineering training program that supports continuous learning of DevOps engineering skills needed to maintain and enhance DevOps. Part Appendices, Continuous Learning, and References includes materials and sources that I have found most useful for engineering DevOps.

462 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 3, 2019