ITIL & DevOps – Compete or Complement?

Availability of frameworks and best practices are here to help businesses and not confuse them over what to choose. Some of the common myths include “ITIL is too much of processes”, “DevOps is a separate team in the company”. But the reality is that we get overwhelmed with these methodologies and start implementing without getting the basics right. Let us sit back and understand their roles in order to choose the right framework for the right problem.

ITIL – A framework with a set of best practices to provide IT Service Management, ITSM efficiently.

◈ ITIL emphasizes on service quality and consistency
◈ Aims for higher customer satisfaction
◈ It consists of 26 processes that are part service lifecycle
◈ Drives digital transformation

DevOps – An integral philosophy to software development & delivery that aims at unifying development and operations.

◈ DevOps integrates software testing, QA with development to achieve better communication and collaboration among product management, software development and deployment teams
◈ Focuses on Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD)
◈ Aligns with lean principles such as managing Work In Progress (WIP), work in batches and being agile to have quicker turnaround time
◈ Brings in cultural transformation

Many companies spend a lot of time in choosing either ITIL or DevOps but rather they should adopt the best practices from both as they complement each other well. It is wiser to identify what to implement when rather than debating either ITIL or DevOps. Let us now discuss the common myths surrounding these two practices.

5 myths about ITIL & DevOps

There are a lot of general myths around ITIL and DevOps. Companies often fail in project execution, blindly believing in these myths. It is significant to understand what these myths are and why they prove to be wrong.

ITIL & DevOps are mutually exclusive

ITIL and DevOps are usually considered as alternatives to each other which is a myth. But in reality, they get along well with each other as their objectives are totally different. Companies would be doing service management in some way and ITIL helps in streamlining such processes whereas DevOps leverages service delivery by bringing relevant teams together and automating routine tasks to be agile.

DevOps is all about software deployment

We often hear, “DevOps is about deployment and delivery”. DevOps is much more than this and it covers aspects of collaboration, breaking down silos and transparency. Software deployment is just one aspect of DevOps and it follows a holistic IT approach. It strives for cross-disciplinary training so that everyone has a basic understanding of every task.

ITIL is suitable only for enterprise companies

It is a general myth that ITIL is complex and costly for smaller businesses to afford. Companies can implement ITIL irrespective of the size of business. ITIL is flexible in terms of adopting only specific suitable processes. Therefore, start small and implement only necessary processes. Small and medium businesses can also adopt ITIL in an incremental fashion.  

DevOps is an automation tool

DevOps is neither a tool nor an automation engine. It is a philosophy that drives automation by identifying gaps and promoting collaboration across functions. But, it is not just automating tasks rather solving IT problems holistically. DevOps bridges the issues related to people and solves operational inconsistencies.

ITIL & DevOps implementation is a lot of investment

Adoption of frameworks such as ITIL and DevOps methodology result in resource and cost optimization. When the right tool is implemented that is relevant for the business, realization of outcome is faster. Further, ITIL and DevOps implementation do not incur much cost when the objectives are understood clearly. Management buy-in is important here to get the IT budget allocation.

Use cases

ITIL & DevOps – Complement & NOT compete 

It is very clear that the fundamentals of ITIL and DevOps are not very different and they have similar roots aiming for better collaboration and improved efficiency. DevOps aims for faster turnaround and agility through automation and ITIL also stresses on automation to improve service efficiency. The secret to success lies in understanding the purpose of each of these clearly and implementing the right methodology for the right problem. ITIL and DevOps can be very good friends provided businesses understand their dynamics.