When an organization leverages and gains confidence in Agile development, the next step in improving operational efficiencies is to move to DevOps. DevOps is a process leveraging Agile and lean practices, where development, operations and testing teams work together in a continuous, automated way that rapidly and frequently releases software. DevOps is a process that not only increases operational effectiveness, but also promotes continuous improvement and learning.

Using DevOps allows for organizations to learn, improve and groom their backlog so they can deliver faster and more effectively. Organizations that invest and pursue DevOps application deployment automation and release management can achieve payoffs that increase operational effectiveness.

Implementing DevOps does away with the traditional concept of a deployed system getting to a “steady state” and then transferring into Operations & Maintenance. Ongoing updates to software will be necessary to accommodate new technology, changes based on end user feedback, bug fixes and updates.