Four IT processes DevOps can boost

"DevOps is a recognition that the relationship between developers and operations staff was broken. Developers are expected to ship more code, more frequently. Change is their friend. Ops are expected to keep everything running smoothly, to protect uptime. Change is their enemy. Something had to give."

Those are the words of Alan Sharp-Paul, a co-founder and co-CEO of ScriptRock. In a new e-book, Sharp-Paul points out that DevOps will help achieve success with ITIL efforts. He outlines four key IT service areas where DevOps can play a role in boosting ITIL:

Change management: DevOps helps boost informal collaboration -- a much-needed and often rare commodity in ITIL. "The main goal is to make consultations between groups proactive, not reactive," Sharp-Paul says.

Release and deployment management: This is an area where the automation side of DevOps really comes into play, says Sharp-Paul. "Automated deployment, automated testing and continuous integration are key. When managing environments and moving applications through them, consistency is what you want. Automated testing, both functional and configuration, will help maintain consistency (or help prevent promotion of issues in the case of functional testing). One sign of an advanced IT shop is the implementation of monitoring solutions earlier in the process."

Incident management: Again, automation engendered through DevOps helps IT departments get a better grip on incident management. "The incident management process will naturally receive flow on benefits in the form of reduced incident numbers, when initiatives in other areas such as automated testing deployment and continuous integration are put into action," says Sharp-Paul.

Knowledge management: This is a natural outgrowth of a well-tuned IT department -- aided by automation is also the key here, he writes. "Whether a deployment, a test, or an approval, each time you automate something you are effectively capturing knowledge."