I’ve heard people characterize devops as something initiated by developers to get sysadmins to be more agile, and I’ve heard others describe it as something initiated by sysadmins to get developers to think more about operational concerns.

In both cases, the comment came from someone saying that devops was a good idea, but concerned that the people on the other side of the wall don’t realize it’s a two-way street.

Neither of these viewpoints go far enough. Developers need to re-think agile to address the full value stream from idea through to production, rather than just the bit in the middle. And sysadmins need to think about how to collect and report data that goes far wider and deeper than memory usage and response times.

Everyone involved needs to cooperate to build a well-informed, highly responsive process that continually and rapidly improves the value of their software.