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DevOps Has Always Been Hard to Define. Does a Standard Help?

ISO/IEC/IEEE 32675:2022 helps make DevOps easier to define with shared terms and life-cycle guidance, while leaving implementation choices to each organization.
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Yes. ISO/IEC/IEEE 32675:2022 gives organizations a shared vocabulary and guidance for defining, controlling, and improving DevOps processes across the software life cycle. It makes DevOps easier to discuss and apply consistently, but it does not prescribe one team structure, cloud platform, or toolchain.

What DevOps means in the standard

An ISO terminology entry attributes this definition to ISO/IEC/IEEE 32675:2022: DevOps is a “set of principles and practices which enable better communication and collaboration between relevant stakeholders” to specify, develop, and operate software and systems products and services, while continuously improving the life cycle. The emphasis is on collaboration and improvement across the work—not on a particular product or job title. (ISO terminology entry)

In practical terms, that means people coordinate from deciding what software should do through building, packaging, deploying, operating, supporting, and improving it. Development and operations are central, but the standard also recognizes other stakeholders whose work affects delivery and service outcomes.

What ISO/IEC/IEEE 32675:2022 covers

The standard’s full title is Information technology — DevOps — Building reliable and secure systems including application build, package and deployment. ISO identifies it as the first edition of an International Standard, published on 2022-08-30. Its 81 pages provide requirements and guidance for implementing DevOps within an organization or project, with the aim of defining, controlling, and improving software life-cycle processes. ISO lists PDF and paper formats in its catalog. (ISO catalog entry)

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Although its title foregrounds building, packaging, and deployment, the stated life-cycle scope is broader: conception, development, production, utilization, support, and retirement. ISO says processes can be applied concurrently, iteratively, recursively, and incrementally, and can suit systems with different purposes, domains, sizes, and levels of complexity.

The standard also makes secure and reliable delivery part of the picture. IEEE’s overview of its DevOps standard highlights the principles “mission first, customer focus, left-shift, continuous everything, and systems thinking,” along with collaboration between developers and operations staff and effective IT controls. (IEEE Standards Association overview)

Why DevOps has been difficult to define

DevOps crosses professional boundaries. A programmer, operations engineer, enterprise architect, or database administrator may each focus on the part closest to their work; the full approach spans those perspectives. The Project Management Institute’s Disciplined Agile discussion describes this tension, helping explain why definitions centered only on automation or deployment can feel incomplete to people focused on operations, security, data, architecture, or customer outcomes. (PMI, “Defining DevOps”)

It is also easy to confuse an enabling environment with the practice itself. Cloud services can support DevOps, but PMI cautions that “that doesn’t mean that the cloud is a prerequisite for doing DevOps.” DevOps is an operating approach, not a synonym for cloud adoption.

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What a standard helps—and what it cannot settle

A formal standard is useful when teams need common terms, explicit process outcomes, and a reference for improving and controlling life-cycle work. It gives people from different specialties a basis for discussing how work moves from idea to operation, rather than relying on each person’s private definition of DevOps.

That common reference is not a universal organizational blueprint. ISO describes a framework that can be applied in different contexts; the organization or project still has to fit the practices to its software, stakeholders, and operating conditions. The standard does not make every organization adopt the same team chart, divide responsibilities identically, or choose the same tools.

Reference What it emphasizes How it helps
ISO/IEC/IEEE 32675:2022 Requirements and guidance for defining, controlling, and improving software life-cycle processes, including secure and reliable build, package, and deployment work. A shared process vocabulary and framework that can be tailored to different projects and systems.
IEEE 2675-2021 overview Named principles, collaboration between development and operations, reliable and secure systems, and IT controls. A concise view of the principles and control concerns associated with DevOps.
DORA resources Delivery capabilities and ways to examine software delivery performance. Resources for teams assessing delivery practices and performance; see Google Cloud’s DORA overview.

These resources serve related but different purposes: a process standard, an overview of principles and controls, and performance-oriented resources should not be treated as interchangeable definitions.

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How teams can use the standard

  1. Agree on the scope. Identify the organization, project, or software system whose life-cycle processes need a shared reference.
  2. Map the work across the life cycle. Include the relevant stakeholders and activities, from conception through operation, support, and retirement—not just the build pipeline.
  3. Use the framework to clarify and improve processes. Define how the work is controlled and improved, while tailoring implementation to the system and its context.
  4. Choose tools and team arrangements to fit. Treat platforms and job titles as implementation decisions, not as the definition of DevOps.

For a sense of the scale of practice-focused research, Google Cloud’s DORA team said its 2021 Accelerate State of DevOps Report represented seven years of research and data from more than 32,000 professionals worldwide. That figure describes the report’s research base; it is not a measure of the standard’s adoption. (2021 report page)

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