Why I love DevOps and hate DevSecOps

DevOps is becoming a buzzword, it makes hype and everyone want to be part of it, even if he/she does not know exactly what DevOps is. One of the symptoms of this is the “DevOpsEngineer”, a title that does not fit in my head. We could debate for days or years on the right definition of DevOps, but essentially is a cultural approach on building software focused on building the right thing with the maximum quality and satisfaction for the customer.

Remember, DevOps is a cultural approach based on transparency and inclusion, not a set of tools/practices

In my head DevOps is nothing really different from Agile, it has just a different perspective. And I know, probably most of you are crying out loud because we had lots of guru, articles, sites telling you the difference from Agile and DevOps, but I simply do not care. If you think that DevOps is about continuous deployment and only tools and practices, you are probably wrong. I can admit that tools and practices can be a backbone of DevOps culture, everything should start with culture, collaboration, inclusion and transparency, tools and practices come later in the game.

What I care, as a professional that gets paid to create software, is the satisfaction of the Customer, because it brings me more work and makes me proud of my work, after all, in this industry, we all love our works. I read “The Goal” lots of years ago, and it is still so actual, the Theory of Constraint is still actual, even in software. In my mind DevOps is just another tentative of changing the approach of making software for the good of the team, ops, Customer and users.

Given that, what is a DevOps Engineer? Giving DevOps prefixed roles in a DevOps culture is really bad, because every person of the team is part of DevOps: Customer + Developers + Operationals.

DevOps culture permeates work environment and we do not need DevOps XXX roles, everyone is part of DevOps culture and if you urge the need to find a DevOps Engineer it just means that other members in the team are out of DevOps culture. A DevOps XXX is just a patch in your culture problem and it will not just work.

Given that, since I love DevOps I hate every DevXXXOps, because there is nothing more to add to DevOps.

This is why I hate with all myself DevSecOps; since DevOps is now a buzzword as Security, why not to create a super buzzword like DevSecOps?

Let me be crystal clear, if you claim that your organization has a DevOps culture and you do not care about security, you are doing it dead wrong. Security is paramount, it should be part of every professional / practice / culture and it should permeate every part of software lifecycle. If you think that you need to add Sec to DevOps it just means that you are not caring about security in your culture, and this is a HUGE problem that should be address before bringing new Buzzword into the game.

Gian Maria.