itSMFI 2017 Forum Focus - June Forum Focus ITSMFI | Page 27

Book Review
By Christian F. Nissen, BlueHat, Denmark
Title: The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class
Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations
Authors: Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, John Willis
Target group: Readers who want a thorough introduction
to DevOps
ISBN: 9781942788003
Publisher: IT Revolution Press
Year: December, 2016
Number of pages: 250 (Paperback)
Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of IT development and IT
operations
In recent decades, DevOps has gained
widespread popularity. DevOps is a showdown
with the idea that it is possible and appropriate
todesign the entire house in detail before we
build it. Instead we build the house gradually and
put smaller parts into service as they become
ready. In this way, we earn the ability to become
wiser along the way and avoid breaking our backs
on overwhelming projects. However, this
approach requires a solid building foundation as
well as the capability to continuously build, test
and use small, independently viable building
blocks.
As a concept, DevOps emerged in 2008 in the
wake of the agile development wave in the 00's.
Five years later, Gene Kim et al. seriously pushed
the DevOps wave with their novel "The Phoenix
Project".
Simply put, DevOps emerged in the intersection
between agile development methods, IT service
management, lean and automated testing,
commissioning and configuration. As a result,
many stakeholders seem to have an opinion
about DevOps.
The DevOps Handbook was therefore long
awaited, because the four writers (along with
27 itSMFI Forum Focus—June 2017
John Allspaw, who has written the Foreword) are
recognized for defining and driving the DevO ps
wave, among others through the DevOps Days
and the DevOps Enterprise Summits. My
expectations of the book were therefore quite
high.
As it appears from the title, it is a handbook, but
don’t expect a detailed step-by-step guide.
Instead the book provides a thorough introduc-
tion to all the ingredients of DevOps.
The book is structured around the three basic
principles introduced in "The Phoenix Project":
Flow, Feedback, and Continual Learning and
Improvement. It's a good choice, as the reader is
reminded of the overview during the reading,
which is quite an accomplishment considering the
width of the subject.
The book is broken into six parts:
Part I contains a brief history of DevOps along
with the underpinning theory and key themes
from relevant bodies of knowledge.
Part II describes how and where to start, and
presents concepts such as value streams,
organizational design principles and patterns,
organizational adoption patterns, and case
studies.