DevOps is such a sadly misunderstood term.

LinkedIn is flooded with posts for “DevOps Engineers.” Many organizations have “DevOps Teams.”

Heck, Microsoft and GitLab, among others, even have tools with the word “DevOps” in the name.

All of these examples are missing the entire point of DevOps.

DevOps is simply the alignment of Development with Operations. In a word: it’s cooperation.

Any time you hear the word “DevOps” in a sentence, phrase, or title, replace it with the word “Cooperation” and see if it still makes sense. If it does, the speaker may know what they’re talking about. If it doesn’t, they’re hyping the buzz, probably for marketing reasons, and they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Nobody wants to be a “Cooperation Engineer” or work on a “Cooperation Team”. That’s just silly!

Don’t be silly.