Do DevOps pertain to QA departments?

Question

A lot of software products have really fast production cycles and frequent releases, this need has created the DevOps position.

Looking that the tasks of a DevOps position have much in common with tasks already done in QA (continuous integration, continuous deployment, continuous delivery, validation, sanity checks, release, etc).

Is it not appropriate for a DevOps to be in a QA team? What is the general practice do DevOps have their own department, where do they integrate in real-life situations?

Answer 1

Agreed there are overlaps between QA and DevOps. Whether a DevOps person belongs in a QA team depends on the specifics of your organization. I think the more important issue is whether DevOps addresses your QA needs.

About an hour ago, I talked with a developer whose team includes a DevOps person. The dev team treats DevOps as their own problem, not a problem to be thrown over the wall. For example, all their deployment processes, including deployment to QA, are automated. The QA staff benefit from that work even though the DevOps person does not belong to the QA organization.

Answer 2

IMO, if you've got a separate QA dept, look for how you can break down silos between yourself and dev first!

Yes, there is great benefit to be had from testers talking to Ops people. DevOps is the cool word right now, but the key principle is that silos can hurt productivity. Seth Eliot did a great talk at TestBash 2 on how testing/monitoring in production can give you really valuable test information: http://www.ministryoftesting.com/2013/04/testbash-video-testing-in-production-do-it-where-it-counts-seth-eliot/

I've worked as an embedded tester in a team where the devs were also responsible for ops. It was a great experience, but so is working as an embedded tester in a team where Ops is nominally a separate team, but you still talk. It's the collaboration that's important.

Answer 3

The DevOps team certainly needs to closely collab with the QA team. After all, DevOps is all about tightening feedback loops for developers, visible ops, pipeline process, and reducing time to find/fix.

QA needs to be involved, but they are definitely two different roles in my opinion.

JP Schneider DevOps / Internet Jedi @ Mozilla Foundation

Answer 4

On the FOSS project I work on, Kuali, we have a separate DevOps team run by a commercial affiliate, our go forward plan is QA will do their own DevOps.