The biggest mistake organisations make with DevOps is thinking it’s just a development method. It’s not. Done properly, DevOps as a service management practice has more impact on operations than it does on IT projects. It changes how we respond, how we prioritise, and how we continuously improve service delivery.
Beyond the Build Pipeline
DevOps isn’t only about deployment pipelines and test automation. That’s part of it, but the real magic is in feedback loops and shared ownership. When operational metrics feed back into planning, and when teams collaborate across the service lifecycle, you don’t just ship faster, you operate smarter.
I’ve seen environments where the same incident repeated every month. Why? Because no one owned the pattern. It sat in a grey zone between dev and ops. DevOps changes that. Suddenly, everyone’s invested in stability and not just getting the next release out the door.
DevOps Helps You Measure What Matters
Traditional ITSM is often awash in metrics that nobody can make decisions around, incident volume, up-time, MTBF, mean time to resolution, SLA compliance. But are we measuring what really matters? DevOps principles encourage us to step back and ask, are we improving flow? Are we reducing toil? Are we enabling change without chaos?
One of the most practical benefits is how DevOps reframes incident response. Rather than blaming individuals, it encourages teams to look at systems, understand causes, and document learning. It turns firefighting into feedback.
That’s why post-incident reviews are more than retrospectives, they’re service improvement opportunities. When you take an integrated view, even outages become strategic inputs, not just operational embarrassments.
Beware the “Dev-Only” Mindset
I’ve worked with teams who embraced DevOps with enthusiasm but only in development. Operations was left out of the room. The result? Developers moved faster, but incidents increased, user satisfaction dropped, and services became more fragile.
DevOps as a service management practice reminds us that speed without stability is a false win. Real progress is when both move forward together. That means involving ops in planning, enabling infrastructure as code, and giving operational teams visibility into roadmaps, changes, and risks.
Aligning with the Business
DevOps doesn’t mean abandoning ITSM it means making it more adaptive. When framed properly, it strengthens service catalogue accuracy, improves request fulfilment, and brings life to what are often stale change processes. You move from bureaucracy to agility without losing control.
But none of this works in a vacuum. To make DevOps meaningful, you’ve got to align it to business outcomes. Speed, resilience, quality — these matter most when they improve something the business cares about, faster onboarding, reduced downtime, better customer experience.
If DevOps becomes a tech-only pursuit, it will plateau. But when it’s embedded into service management, when everyone sees the system, not just their silo, it becomes the engine for real transformation.
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