History of DevOps: Complete Timeline and Its Future [UPDATED]

DevOps is a buzzword that has taken the tech industry by storm, but have you ever wondered how it all began?

From the early days of the agile software development movement to the modern era of continuous integration and deployment, the history of DevOps is a fascinating journey through the evolution of technology.

This blog will take you on a trip through time to explore the origins of DevOps and how it has transformed the world of software development. But we won’t stop there—we’ll also look ahead to the future of DevOps and how it will shape the industry in the coming years.

The World Before DevOps

Before DevOps became a thing, software development followed what was known as the waterfall methodology. Essentially, it means that each development phase was handled by a different team or department.

In those days, software releases were often a stressful and unpredictable process. Developers would throw their code over the wall to operations and hope for the best, while operations teams would struggle to deploy it smoothly without context or understanding of the code. This approach resulted in a lot of finger-pointing and frustration, with both development and operations teams often blaming each other for any issues.

As you can imagine, little dev and ops cooperation led to many delays and miscommunication, with projects often running over budget and behind schedule.

Thankfully, DevOps emerged to help bridge the gap between both developers and operations. It was born out of a need for faster releases, improved productivity, and better team collaboration.

Now, let’s dive into the origin of the DevOps movement and its impact on the world of software development.

History Timeline of DevOps

No one can tell the DevOps history without knowing the agile practitioner Patrick Debois. He is widely credited as the father of DevOps, first pushing for collaboration between developers and operations teams at a 2008 agile conference.

How exactly did he create the DevOps methodology? Here is a detailed timeline of the history of DevOps:

2007:

In 2007, Debois began working on a challenging data center migration project for a Belgian government ministry. He was responsible for certification and readiness testing, which required him to work closely with both the application development and ops teams, including server, database, and network specialists.

One of the main challenges of a project manager was the constant back-and-forth between the development and operations sides of the project. Debois recognized the need for collaboration between both teams and began to brainstorm ways to improve communication.

2008:

An Agile conference was held in Toronto, Canada, last 2008, where Andrew Shafer attempted to arrange a meetup session called “Agile Infrastructure.” Unfortunately, the session received such negative feedback that no one showed up, including Andrew himself.

However, Debois was excited to find someone who shared his interests and attended the session anyway. When he realized he was the only one there, he sought Andrew in the conference hallway, and they started a conversation. Later that year, they established a discussion group for people who wanted to share their ideas on bridging the gap between development and operations.

2009:

Initially, not many people shared their ideas. But in June 2009, John Allspaw and Paul Hammond delivered a talk titled “10+ Deploys a Day: Dev and Ops Cooperation at Flickr” at the O’Reilly Velocity Conference. Debois watched the streaming video of the presentation at his home in Belgium, and it immediately clicked with him.

So, he called for a gathering of developers and system administrators to discuss the best ways to bridge the gap between the two distinct fields.

Debois named this event DevOpsDays, which took place in late October 2009. The event gained attention from experts in both fields and sparked lively debates on Twitter, where the hashtag was shortened to DevOps. Soon, smaller tech companies started to adopt DevOps culture and practices, and tools were created to aid these newly formed teams. DevOps began gaining a grassroots following, and people started implementing their ideas.

2011:

In March of 2011, Cameron Haight, a Gartner analyst, predicted that DevOps would continue to gain momentum over the next few years, which drew more attention to the DevOps movement.

Soon enough, businesses of all sizes began implementing DevOps tools and methods, recognizing them as a valuable framework for their operations.

DevOps quickly became the buzzword in the IT industry, often compared to Agile as the next big thing.

2013:

In 2013, the release of the book “The Phoenix Project,” authored by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford, marked a significant moment in DevOps’ success.

This work of fiction tells the story of an IT manager in a seemingly hopeless situation tasked with rescuing a mission-critical e-commerce development project that has gone awry. Along the way, his enigmatic mentor, a board member well-versed in lean manufacturing principles and practices, introduces him to new perspectives on IT and application development, including the concept of DevOps.

2015:

As DevOps gained more traction in the enterprise arena, it was rapidly incorporated into the agile methodology of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and scaled across organizations.

2016:

DevOps became the new norm for high-performing companies as the business environment continued to evolve. What was considered state-of-the-art three years ago was no longer sufficient.

Based on DevOps statistics from 2017, it was revealed that 60% of IT employers were actively seeking to hire developers to create DevOps teams in their company. Later, they would be called DevOps engineers. The demand for such positions has only increased in urgency since then.

2018:

A report sponsored by Deloitte, the 2018 Accelerate State of DevOps Report, introduced a descriptive and pragmatic approach to guide teams and mature DevOps initiatives. This approach, ranging from stages 0 to 5, provides a clear roadmap for organizations to follow.

Here is an overview:

Stage 0: Build the foundation

Stage 1: Normalize the technology stack

Stage 2: Standardize and reduce variability

Stage 3: Expand DevOps practices

Stage 4: Automate infrastructure delivery

Stage 5: Provide self-service capabilities

2019:

Enterprises began incorporating additional IT functions, such as security (DevSecOps), privacy, policy, data (DataOps), and controls, into their DevOps culture and processes. This allowed organizations to integrate various aspects of IT into their workflows and improve the overall efficiency of software delivery.

However, the 2019 State of DevOps Report revealed that 79% of surveyed firms, the majority from EU countries, fall into the Medium category on the DevOps evolutionary scale. This suggests that it is relatively easy to reach the middle stage, but progressing beyond it remains difficult.

2020:

The 2020 DevOps Salary Report revealed that companies at a high level of DevOps evolution compensate their employees at the highest level and that salaries rose worldwide, most steeply for upper-income respondents in Japan and the United Kingdom.

According to PayScale, the average salary of a DevOps engineer in France is €42,975 per year, while in Spain, it is €45,722 annually.

2021:

Automation tools for DevOps today are a foundational part of the continuous testing process. According to the 2021 State of DevOps report, data revealed that 97% of companies that employ advanced DevOps methodologies believe that automation plays a vital role in improving the quality of their work.

2022:

Influenced by digital transformation and hybrid working, DevOps needs in enterprises increased because of software complexity and a customer-driven market. Companies seek better ways to manage their technology and people to maximize efficiency.

The State of DevOps Automation 2022 Report shows that while companies are expanding their tech stack to manage these trends, they are still struggling with managing complexity manually and integrating their incident response tools.

2023:

The demand for DevOps Engineers stayed consistently high throughout the year, with an average of 22,000+ job openings listed on LinkedIn. Particularly, it suggests a strong and consistent demand for DevOps professionals in India.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has also made its way into the DevOps world, helping to automate processes and improve efficiency. AI development tools on teams are still in their infancy. Still, according to findings from the 2023 Accelerate State of DevOps Report, users are incorporating AI tools in their work process for:

• collaborating with teammates
• managing projects
• solving file path issues

2024 and Beyond: The Future and Continuous Improvement of DevOps

In recent years, DevOps has really made waves in the software development scene, and you can see its impact on how IT practices keep evolving. The DevOps field is set to grow big time, with a 25% annual growth rate expected between 2024 and 2032.

For 2024, we will continue to see the integration of DevOps practices and tools into various IT fields. Let’s look into some of the trends we can expect:

• Integration of Generative AI tools: The trend of using AI in IT operations is on the rise and will keep growing. These tools can really boost platforms by improving how we detect anomalies, find root causes, and automate fixes. Experiments show that large language models (LLMs) can accurately pinpoint root causes when given the right context. This could majorly improve how quickly we detect and resolve issues, cutting down on Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR) for various incidents.
• DevOps with cloud and microservice architecture: Using cloud infrastructure’s scalability and flexibility along with the fast development of microservices speeds up innovation and market reach. This approach boosts scalability, sustainability, collaboration, and customer experience, which in turn drives growth and productivity.
• Growing adoption of DevSecOps: It’s all about spotting and fixing high-risk issues in the DevOps setup. By blending app development, operations, infrastructure as code, and cybersecurity within the CI/CD pipeline, you can automate and monitor security throughout the software development lifecycle. DevSecOps encourages a proactive and team-based approach to security, leading to safer applications, quicker development times, and fewer production hiccups.
• GitOps deeper integration with DevOps workflows: GitOps stands out in DevOps by integrating infrastructure management into the same version control system as application development. This centralizes collaboration and leverages Git’s capabilities. GitOps enhances efficiency, security, developer experience, cost reduction, and deployment speed. Organizations achieve better coordination, fewer errors, and faster issue resolution by unifying infrastructure and application lifecycles. Additionally, GitOps supports the adoption of containers and microservices while ensuring consistency across all infrastructure components.
• Elevating Developer Experience (DevEx): As tech talent becomes vital, companies are shifting from the tool-centered DevOps approach to a broader DevEx mindset, according to Deloitte. DevEx focuses on making life easier for developers by offering seamless platforms, efficient workflows, and a positive culture. This not only boosts productivity but also results in happier staff and better software and customer experiences. With automation and low-code tools emerging, DevEx could even transform the workforce, empowering citizen developers and allowing skilled engineers to focus on more advanced innovations.

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