DevOps and ITIL

This section explains how DevOps and other ways of working coexist and fit together in a larger whole.

DevOps fits well together with many frameworks for Agile or Lean enterprises. Scaled Agile Framework, or SAFe? , specifically mentions DevOps. There is nearly never any disagreement between proponents of different Agile practices and DevOps since DevOps originated in the Agile environments. The story is a bit different with ITIL, though.

ITIL, which was formerly known as Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a practice used by many large and mature organizations.

ITIL is a large framework that formalizes many aspects of the software life cycle. While DevOps and Continuous Delivery hold the view that the changesets we deliver to production should be small and happen often, at first glance, ITIL would appear to hold the opposite view. It should be noted that this isn't really true. Legacy systems are quite often monolithic, and in these cases, you need a process such as ITIL to manage the complex changes often associated with large monolithic systems.

If you are working in a large organization, the likelihood that you are working with such large monolithic legacy systems is very high.

In any case, many of the practices described in ITIL translate directly into corresponding DevOps practices. ITIL prescribes a configuration management system and a configuration management database. These types of systems are also integral to DevOps, and several of them will be described in this book.