Electronic Products Word of the Week: DevOps

DevOps is a software development method which stresses that  development and operations teams within a manufacturer work together to ensure frequent, reliable, high-quality products.

The term, which simply means “development and operations,” is a method of getting new products to market quickly. It is particularly important for producing software apps for mobile devices.

As IBM’s Michael Rowe observes, “In reality, the app does not have to be perfect, it simply has to be useful and intuitive.” 

DevOps is particularly necessary in a market that includes mobile devices that not only run different operating systems —  Android, iOS,  Blackberry, Windows, the list will surely get longer — but have different device characteristics — screen resolution, processors, graphics capabilities, and so on — that can cause frustrating incompatibilities. Anyone who has installed software on an IBM-compatible  personal computer in the past knows the pitfalls of even slight incompatibility with what the software expects the host machine to be.

DevOps stresses automating as much of the testing on the manufacturer’s side, which is perhaps the reason software installation on the consumer side is automated to the degree it is, cutting down the frustration of incompatibility because the software is tested, paradoxically, more quickly and thoroughly, simulating on as many operating systems as possible.

Moreover, today people are bringing their own mobile devices into the workplace, so corporate support can be difficult.  This is called the “consumerization” of IT (information technology, the  company’s department that cares for the company’s computers). If you can no longer say, for example, “this is a Windows shop,” you have a problem making sure apps work.

So apps have to be for the moment, be nimble enough to work now, but realistic enough to know that things could change rather rapidly. The app maker can use the devOps methodology to make sure the app is current – always working on the app, always getting to market the latest version, the latest useful product.