Despite the fact I am working with team of devops for quite a long time I was still looking for an answer what devops is, what does it mean to practice devops. During BoilingFrogs conference I’ve watched keynote about devops, but it didn’t explain at all to me. Searching the internet also doesn’t give a straight answer for those questions. Somewhere around April 2017 I bought The DevOPS Handbook by Gene Kim, Patric Debois and Jez Humble.

The book is quite long — over 450 pages. But last 50 pages are appendices. After this lecture I can admit that now I understand what DevOps is about. Handbook explains all of the principles in very detailed way. Theory is very often supported by case studies and real-life examples describing the implementation of technique or process in a well-known company like Etsy or Google. If you would like to find information about specific tools or cloud solution then this book is not for you. There is very little about specific technology, cloud provider or programming languages. And this is fantastic! Because DevOps should not be bounded to any technology. Instead of this book explains why some techniques should be used and what are the benefits.

I recommend The DevOps Handbook to find a answer what the DevOps is. It can also be a great book to which you can back in any time when your team has a problem with delivering high quality products. Or maybe you just want to improve your software delivery process.