FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

It has been five years since the first edition of The DevOps Handbook was released. While so much has changed, so much has also remained the same. Some of our tools and technologies are no longer in vogue or might not exist, but that shouldn’t detract any readers. Although the technology landscape has shifted, the underlying principles presented in this book remain as relevant as ever.

In fact, the need for DevOps is even greater today, as organizations need to deliver value quickly, safely, securely, and reliably to their customers and users. To do this, they need to transform their internal processes and leverage technology to deliver value—using DevOps practices. This is true for organizations around the world and across all industry verticals.

Over the past several years, I’ve led research in the annual State of DevOps Reports (first with Puppet and later with DORA and Google), with co-authors Jez Humble and Gene Kim. The research has confirmed that many of the practices described in this book lead to improved outcomes like speed and stability of software releases; reductions in deployment pain and burnout of our engineers; and contributions to organizational performance, including profitability, productivity, customer satisfaction, effectiveness, and efficiency.

For the second edition of The DevOps Handbook, we have refreshed the text with updated data based on the latest research and best practices, and included new case studies to share even more stories about what transformations look like “on the ground.” Thanks for joining us on this journey of continuous improvement.

—Nicole Forsgren, PhD

Partner at Microsoft Research

2021