Glossary

DevOps Glossary

Agile Software Development — A lightweight framework that promotes iterative development and incremental delivery using self-organizing cross-functional teams.

Cadence — The rhythm or sync of a DevOps value stream.

Container — A software development container groups applications and their dependencies together, making it possible to build applications where test and live environments can be faithfully replicated.

Continuous Delivery — A methodology that focuses on ensuring software is always in a release-ready state throughout its life cycle. The deployment process becomes iterative, providing more frequent releases to your end user. 

Continuous Deployment — Continuous deployment is taking continuous delivery a step further, meaning every valid code change will be deployed to production automatically.

Continuous Integration — Continuous integration is the concept of testing code changes automatically, and merging passed changes in a common master branch. The goal is to locate and address software bugs in a timelier manner, and reduce the time it takes to release software updates. Continuous integration is a prerequisite for any continuous delivery pipeline.

Definition of Done — In software development, a shared understanding of what it means for work to be complete.

Deployment — The release of software updates to users. In DevOps environments, deployment is fully automated so users get updates as soon as they are written and tested.

Deployment Automation — The streamlining of applications and configurations to the various environments used in the SDLC. 

Dev (from DevOps) — Individuals involved in software development activities, developers.

DevOps — The cultural movement/methodology that stresses communication, collaboration, and integration between software developers and IT operations.

DevSecOps — Automation of core security tasks by embedding security controls and processes into the DevOps workflow. The goal is to bring security into the process as early as possible in order to minimize vulnerabilities and risks.

Everything as Code — Refers to a development technique where all of the components needed to build and deliver software — deployment packages, infrastructure, environments, release templates, dashboards —are defined as code. Defining your delivery pipeline as code gives you a standardized, controlled way to onboard projects, applications, and teams.

Feedback Loops — Creating fast and continuous feedback between operations and development early in the software delivery process is a major principle underpinning DevOps. 

Governance — In IT, governance refers to the process by which organizations evaluate and ensure that their tech investments are performing as expected and not introducing new risk. A formal governance process also helps companies ensure that it activities are aligned with business goals, while also ensuring that everything is compliant with common standards.

Hybrid Cloud — A cloud computing environment that uses a mix of cloud services — on premises, private cloud, and third party. As enterprises scale their software delivery processes, their usage needs and costs change. Using a hybrid cloud solution offers greater flexibility and more deployment options.

Intelligence (DevOps) — A good software delivery process requires analyzing and correlating data from every part of the delivery pipeline. DevOps intelligence combines detailed metrics on past activity, real-time visibility into present status, and insightful analytics to provide early warning of problems and predict future performance.

Infrastructure as Code — Infrastructure as code is a way of managing IT infrastructure by defining all resources as code.

Jenkins — An open source continuous integration/continuous delivery and deployment (CI/CD) automation software DevOps tool written in the Java programming language. It is used to implement CI/CD workflows, called pipelines.

Kaizen — A Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement of working practices, personal efficiency, etc. The goal is to find ways to improve across a full value stream that leads to better customer outcomes.

Kanban — A visual method of controlling activity that pulls the flow of work through a process at a manageable pace.

Kubernetes — Kubernetes is one of the most widely-used container orchestration platforms. Kubernetes can be used to run container workloads in modern cloud platforms as well as traditional datacenters.

Lean — A production philosophy that focuses on reducing waste and improving the flow of processes to improve customer value.

Ops (from DevOps) — Individuals involved in the daily operational activities needed to deploy and manage systems and services.

Release — One or more system changes that are built, tested and deployed together.

Waterfall (Software Development) — Linear and sequential approach to software design and development where progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards.

Terraform — Terraform is one of the most popular tools for building infrastructure as code in modern cloud environments.