When asked “What is devops?”, the “right” answer is to talk about culture and people. You aren’t supposed to talk about tools or workflows because only vendors talk about devops and tools together. If someone says you need X tool, process, or workflow to “do devops”, they are trying to sell you something. Maybe, but maybe not.

Devops is developers and operators bringing software products to market together. To me this looks like a group of people from different specialties, warming themselves around a campfire, keeping the fire burning, keeping the wolves at bay - those who would put out your fire - working together on a common goal.

The campfire foundation is the source control repository for your product. It holds your intellectual property and everything in its orbit. A single place where the entire universe lives.

Everything is checked in. Application code, infrastructure code (including DNS, compute, identity, networking, database, CDN, load balancing, etc), change management tooling, incident response tooling, security policy, and documentation on all technical topics. Nothing is withheld. Nothing is invisible or done quietly in the margins. No cabal of insiders who withhold key details from the rest of the group. No groups made to feel that others don’t want to know about the burden they carry.

The tools and workflows are aligned with and essential to the culture, organization, team, and people you want to grow - and thus will make or break the product.