SRE Practitioner
SM
Exam Study Guide
D
evOps Institute is dedicated to advancing the human elements of DevOps success.
We fulfill our mission through our SKIL framework of Skills, Knowledge, Ideas and
Learning.
C
ertification is one means of showcasing your skills. While we strongly support formal
training as the best learning experience and method for certification preparation,
DevOps Institute also recognizes that humans learn in different ways from different
resources and experiences. As the defacto certification body for DevOps, DevOps
Institute has now removed the barrier to certification by removing formal training
prerequisites and opening our testing program to anyone who believes that they have
the topical knowledge and experience to pass one or more of our certification exams.
This examination study guide will help test-takers prepare by defining the scope of the
exam and includes the following:
● C
ourse Description
● Examination Requirements
● DevOps Glossary of Terms
● Value Added Resources
● Sample Exam(s) with Answer Key
T
hese assets provide a guideline for the topics, concepts, vocabulary and definitions
that the exam candidate is expected to know and understand in order to pass the
exam. The knowledge itself will need to be gained on its own or through training by
one of our Global Education Partners.
Test-takers who successfully pass the exam will also receive a certificate and digital
badge from DevOps Institute, acknowledging their achievement, that can be shared
with their professional online networks.
I
f you have any questions, please contact our DevOps Institute Customer Service team
at CustomerService@DevOpsInstitute.com
.
©DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Course Description
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Practitioner
SM
Course Description
DURATION - 24 Hours
Introduces a range of practices for advancing service reliability engineering through a
mixture of automation, organizational ways of working and business alignment. Tailored
for those focused on large-scale service scalability and reliability.
OVERVIEW
The SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) Practitioner course introduces ways to scale
services economically and reliably in an organization. It explores strategies to improve
agility, cross-functional collaboration, and transparency of health of services towards
building resiliency by design, automation and closed loop remediations.
The course aims to equip participants with the practices, methods, and tools to engage
people across the organization involved in reliability using real-life scenarios and case
stories. Upon completion of the course, participants will have tangible takeaways to
leverage when back in the office such as implementing SRE models that fit their
organizational context, building advanced observability in distributed systems, building
resiliency by design and effective incident responses using SRE practices.
The course is developed by leveraging key SRE sources, engaging with thought-leaders
in the SRE space and working with organizations embracing SRE to extract real-life best
practices and has been designed to teach the key principles & practices necessary for
starting SRE adoption.
This course positions learners to successfully complete the SRE Practitioner certification
exam.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
At the end of the course, the following learning objectives are expected to be
achieved:
1. Practical view of how to successfully implement a flourishing SRE culture in your
organization.
2. The underlying principles of SRE and an understanding of what it is not in terms of
anti-patterns, and how you become aware of them to avoid them.
3. The organizational impact of introducing SRE.
4. Acing the art of SLIs and SLOs in a distributed ecosystem and extending the usage of
Error Budgets beyond the normal to innovate and avoid risks.
©DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Course Description
5. Building security and resilience by design in a distributed, zero-trust environment.
6. How do you implement full stack observability, distributed tracing and bring about
an Observability-driven development culture?
7. Curating data using AI to move from reactive to proactive and predictive incident
management. Also, how you use DataOps to build clean data lineage.
8. Why is Platform Engineering so important in building consistency and predictability of
SRE culture?
9. Implementing practical Chaos Engineering.
10. Major incident response responsibilities for a SRE based on incident command
framework, and examples of anatomy of unmanaged incidents.
11. Perspective of why SRE can be considered as the purest implementation of DevOps.
12. SRE Execution model
13. Understanding the SRE role and understanding why reliability is everyone’s problem.
14. SRE success story learnings
AUDIENCE
The target audience for the SRE Practitioner course are professionals including:
● Anyone focused on large-scale service scalability and reliability
● Anyone interested in modern IT leadership and organizational change
approaches
● Business Managers
● Business Stakeholders
● Change Agents
● Consultants
● DevOps Practitioners
● IT Directors
● IT Managers
● IT Team Leaders
● Product Owners
● Scrum Masters
● Software Engineers
● Site Reliability Engineers
● System Integrators
● Tool Providers
LEARNER MATERIALS
● Twenty-four (24) hours of instructor-led training and exercise facilitation
● Learner Manual (excellent post-class reference)
● Participation in unique exercises designed to apply concepts
● Sample documents, templates, tools and techniques
● Access to additional value-added resources and communities
©DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Course Description
PREREQUISITES
It is highly recommended that learners attend the SRE Foundation course with an
accredited DevOps Institute Education Partner and earn the SRE Foundation
certification prior to attending the SRE Practitioner course and exam. An understanding
and knowledge of common SRE terminology, concepts, principles and related work
experience are recommended.
CERTIFICATION EXAM
Successfully passing (65%) the 90-minute examination, consisting of 40 multiple-choice
questions, leads to the SRE Practitioner certificate. The certification is governed and
maintained by DevOps Institute.
COURSE OUTLINE
Course Introduction
Module 1: SRE Anti-patterns
● Rebranding Ops or DevOps or Dev as SRE
● Users notice an issue before you do
● Measuring until my Edge
● False positives are worse than no alerts
● Configuration management trap for snowflakes
● The Dogpile: Mob incident response
● Point fixing
● Production Readiness Gatekeeper
● Fail-Safe really?
Module 2: SLO is a Proxy for Customer Happiness
● Define SLIs that meaningfully measure the reliability of a service from a user’s
perspective
● Defining System boundaries in a distributed ecosystem for defining correct SLIs
● Use error budgets to help your team have better discussions and make better
data-driven decisions
● Overall, Reliability is only as good as the weakest link on your service graph
● Error thresholds when 3rd party services are used
©DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Course Description
Module 3: Building Secure and Reliable Systems
● SRE and their role in Building Secure and Reliable systems
● Design for Changing Architecture
● Fault tolerant Design
● Design for Security
● Design for Resiliency
● Design for Scalability
● Design for Performance
● Design for Reliability
● Ensuring Data Security and Privacy
Module 4: Full-Stack Observability
● Modern Apps are Complex & Unpredictable
● Slow is the new down
● Pillars of Observability
● Implementing Synthetic and End user monitoring
● Observability driven development
● Distributed Tracing
● What happens to Monitoring?
● Instrumenting using Libraries an Agents
Module 5: Platform Engineering and AIOPs
● Taking a Platform Centric View solves Organizational scalability challenges such
as fragmentation, inconsistency and unpredictability.
● How do you use AIOps to improve Resiliency
● How can DataOps help you in the journey
● A simple recipe to implement AIOps
● Indicative measurement of AIOps
©DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Course Description
Module 6: SRE & Incident Response Management
● SRE Key Responsibilities towards incident response
● DevOps & SRE and ITIL
● OODA and SRE Incident Response
● Closed Loop Remediation and the Advantages
● Swarming – Food for Thought
● AI/ML for better incident management
Module 7: Chaos Engineering
● Navigating Complexity
● Chaos Engineering Defined
● Quick Facts about Chaos Engineering
● Chaos Monkey Origin Story
● Who is adopting Chaos Engineering
● Myths of Chaos
● Chaos Engineering Experiments
● GameDay Exercises
● Security Chaos Engineering
● Chaos Engineering Resources
Module 8: SRE is the Purest form of DevOps
● Key Principles of SRE
● SREs help increase Reliability across the product spectrum
● Metrics for Success
● Selection of Target areas
● SRE Execution Model
● Culture and Behavioral Skills are key
● SRE Case study
Post-class assignments/exercises
○ Non-abstract Large Scale Design (after Day 1)
○ Engineering Instrumentation- Instrumenting Gremlin (after Day 2)
Site Reliability Engineering
(SRE) Practitioner
SM
Examination Requirements
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Practitioner
SM
Certificate
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Examination Requirements
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Practitioner is a freestanding certification from DevOps Institute.
The purpose of this certification and its associated course is to impart, test and validate
knowledge, comprehension and application of advanced SRE practices, methods, and tools. The
SRE Practitioner certification is tailored for anyone focused on large-scale service scalability and
reliability with an interest in modern IT leadership and organizational change approaches.
Eligibility for Examination
The following prerequisite must be met before sitting for the SRE Practitioner certification exam:
● It is highly recommended that candidates complete and earn the SRE Foundation
certification from DevOps Institute.
● Although there are no formal training prerequisites for the exam, DevOps Institute highly
recommends that candidates complete at least 24 contact hours of formal, approved
training delivered by an accredited Education Partner of DevOps Institute in order to
prepare for the exam.
Examination Administration
The SRE Practitioner certification is accredited, managed, and administered under the strict
protocols and standards of DevOps Institute.
Level of Diculty
The SRE Practitioner certification uses the Bloom Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in the
construction of both the content and the examination.
• The SRE Practitioner exam contains Bloom 1 questions that test learners’ knowledge of
advanced SRE terms and concepts.
• The SRE Practitioner exam contains Bloom 2 questions that test learners’ comprehension
of advanced SRE terms and concepts.
• The exam also contains Bloom 3 questions that test learners’ application of advanced SRE
concepts in various contexts.
Format of the Examination
Candidates must achieve a passing score to gain the SRE Practitioner Certificate.
Exam Type
40 multiple choice questions
Duration
90 minutes
Prerequisites
The SRE Foundation certification from DevOps Institute is highly
recommended before sitting for the SRE Practitioner exam.
It is also highly recommended that candidates complete the Site Reliability
Engineering (SRE) Practitioner course from an accredited DevOps Institute
Education Partner.
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Examination Requirements
Supervised
No
Open Book
Yes
Passing Score
65%
Delivery
Web-based
Badge
SRE Practitioner Certified
Exam Topic Areas and Question Weighting
The SRE Practitioner exam requires knowledge and understanding of the topic areas described
below.
Topic Area
Description
Max
Questions
SREP – 1:
SRE Anti-Patterns
5
SREP – 2:
SLO is the Proxy for Customer Happiness
5
SREP – 3:
Building Secure and Reliable Systems
8
SREP – 4:
Full Stack Observability
5
SREP – 5:
Using Platform Engineering & AIOps
6
SREP – 6:
SRE & Incident Response Management
4
SREP – 7:
Chaos Engineering
4
SREP - 8:
SRE is a Form of DevOps
3
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Examination Requirements
Concept and Terminology List
The candidate is expected to understand, comprehend and apply the following SRE concepts and
terms at Bloom’s 1 (Knowledge), 2 (Comprehension), and 3 (Application) levels.
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Examination Requirements
DEVOPS GLOSSARY OF
TERMS
This glossary is provided for reference only as it contains key
terms that may or may not be examinable.
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 1
Term
Definition
Course Appearances
12-Factor App Design
A methodology for building modern,
scalable, maintainable software-as-a-
service applications.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Engineering
Foundation
2-Factor or 2-Step
Authentication
Two-Factor Authentication, also known
as 2FA or TFA or Two-Step
Authentication is when a user provides
two authentication factors; usually,
firstly a password and then a second
layer of verification such as a code
texted to their device, shared secret,
physical token, or biometrics.
DevSecOps Foundation
A/B Testing
Deploy different versions of an EUT to
different customers and let the
customer feedback determine which is
best.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
A3 Problem Solving
A structured problem-solving approach
that uses a lean tool called the A3
Problem-Solving Report. The term "A3"
represents the paper size historically
used for the report (a size roughly
equivalent to 11" x 17").
DevOps Foundation
Access Management
Granting an authenticated identity
access to an authorized resource (e.g.,
data, service, environment) based on
defined criteria (e.g., a mapped role),
while preventing unauthorized identity
access to a resource.
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 2
Access Provisioning
Access provisioning is the process of
coordinating the creation of user
accounts, e-mail authorizations in the
form of rules and roles, and other tasks
such as provisioning of physical
resources associated with enabling
new users to systems or environments.
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Administration Testing
The purpose of the test is to determine
if an End User Test (EUT) is able to
process administration tasks as
expected.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation
Advice Process
Any person making a decision must
seek advice from everyone
meaningfully affected by the decision
and people with expertise in the
matter. Advice received must be taken
into consideration, though it does not
have to be accepted or followed. The
objective of the advice process is not to
form a consensus, but to inform the
decision-maker so that they can make
the best decision possible. Failure to
follow the advice process undermines
trust and unnecessarily introduces risk
to the business.
DevSecOps Foundation
Agile
A work management method for
complex endeavors that divides tasks
into small "sprints" of work with
frequent reassessment and adaptation
of plans.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, Site
Reliability Engineering,
Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 3
Agile (adjective)
Able to move quickly and easily; well-
coordinated. Able to think and
understand quickly; able to solve
problems and have new ideas.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Agile Coach
Help teams master Agile development
and DevOps practices; enables
productive ways of working and
collaboration.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Agile Enterprise
A fast-moving, flexible, and robust
company capable of rapid response to
unexpected challenges, events, and
opportunities.
DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation
Agile Manifesto
A formal proclamation of values and
principles to guide an iterative and
people-centric approach to software
development. http://agilemanifesto.or
g
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Agile Portfolio
Management
Involves evaluating in-flight projects
and proposed future initiatives to
shape and govern the ongoing
investment in projects and
discretionary work. CA’s Agile Central
and VersionOne are examples.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Agile Practice Owner
A role accountable for the overall
quality of a service management
practice and owner of the Practice
Backlog.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Agile Principles
The twelve principles that underpin the
Agile Manifesto.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 4
Agile Process
Delivers "just enough" structure and
control to enable the organization to
achieve its service outcomes in the
most expeditious, effective, and
efficient way possible. It is easy to
understand, easy to follow, and prizes
its collaboration and outcomes more
than its artifacts.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Agile Process
Engineering
An iterative and incremental approach
to designing a process with short,
iterative designs of potentially
shippable process increments or
microprocesses.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Agile Process
Improvement
Ensures that IT Service Management
agility introduced through Agile
Process Engineering is continually
reviewed and adjusted as part of IT
Service Management’s commitment to
continual improvement.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Agile Service
Management
A framework that ensures that ITSM
processes reflect Agile values and are
designed with "just enough" control
and structure in order to effectively and
efficiently deliver services that facilitate
customer outcomes when and how
they are needed.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Agile Service
Management Artifacts
Practice Backlog, Sprint Backlog,
Increment
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Agile Service
Management Events
Practice/microprocess Planning, The
Sprint, Sprint Planning, Process
Standup, Sprint Review, Sprint
Retrospective
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Agile Service
Management Roles
Agile Practice Owner, Agile Service
Management Team, Agile Service
Manager
Certified Agile Service
Manager
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 5
Agile Service
Management Team
A team of at least 3 people (including a
customer or practitioner) that is
accountable for a single microprocess
or a complete service management
practice.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Agile Service Manager
An Agile Service Management subject
matter expert who is the coach and
protector of the Agile Service
Management Team.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Agile Software
Development
Group of software development
methods in which requirements and
solutions evolve through collaboration
between self-organizing, cross-
functional teams. Usually applied using
the Scrum or Scaled Agile Framework
approach.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Amazon Web Services
(AWS)
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a secure
cloud services platform, offering
compute power, database storage,
content delivery, and other
functionality to help businesses scale
and grow.
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Analytics
Test results processed and presented in
an organized manner in accordance
with analysis methods and criteria.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Andon
A system gives an assembly line worker
the ability, and moreover the
empowerment, to stop production
when a defect is found, and
immediately call for assistance.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Anti-pattern
A commonly reinvented but poor
solution to a problem.
DevOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 6
Anti-fragility
Antifragility is a property of systems
that increases its capability to thrive as
a result of stressors, shocks, volatility,
noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or
failures.
DevOps Foundation, Site
Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
API Testing
The purpose of the test is to determine
if an API for an EUT functions as
expected.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Application
Performance
Management (APM)
APM is the monitoring and
management of the performance and
availability of software applications.
APM strives to detect and diagnose
complex application performance
problems to maintain an expected level
of service.
Site Reliability
Engineering, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Application
Programming Interface
(API)
A set of protocols used to create
applications for a specific OS or as an
interface between modules or
applications.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Application
Programming Interface
(API) Testing
The purpose of the test is to determine
if an API for an EUT functions as
expected.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Application Release
Controlled continuous delivery pipeline
capabilities including automation
(release upon code commit).
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 7
Application Release
Automation (ARA) or
Orchestration (ARO)
Controlled continuous delivery pipeline
capabilities including automation
(release upon code commit),
environment modeling (end-to-end
pipeline stages, and deploy application
binaries, packages, or other artifacts to
target environments), and release
coordination (project, calendar, and
scheduling management, integrate
with change control and/or IT service
support management).
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Application Test-Driven
Development (ATDD)
Acceptance Test-Driven Development
(ATDD) is a practice in which the whole
team collaboratively discusses
acceptance criteria, with examples, and
then distills them into a set of concrete
acceptance tests before development
begins.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Application Testing
The purpose of the test is to determine
if an application is performing
according to its requirements and
expected behaviors.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Application Under Test
(AUT)
The EUT is a software application. E.g.
Business application is being tested.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Architecture
The fundamental underlying design of
computer hardware, software, or both
in combination.
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Artifact
Any element in a software development
project including documentation, test
plans, images, data files, and
executable modules.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 8
Artifact Repository
Store for binaries, reports, and
metadata. Example tools include JFrog
Artifactory, Sonatype Nexus.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Attack path
The chain of weaknesses a threat may
exploit to achieve the attacker's
objective. For example, an attack path
may start by compromising a user's
credentials, which are then used in a
vulnerable system to escalate
privileges, which in turn is used to
access a protected database of
information, which is copied out to an
attacker's own server(s).
DevSecOps Foundation
Audit Management
The use of automated tools to ensure
products and services are auditable,
including keeping audit logs of build,
test and deploy activities, auditing
configurations, and users, as well as log
files from production operations.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Authentication
The process of verifying an asserted
identity. Authentication can be based
on what you know (e.g., password or
PIN), what you have (token or one-time
code), what you are (biometrics), or
contextual information.
DevSecOps Foundation
Authorization
The process of granting roles to users
to have access to resources.
DevSecOps Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 9
Auto-DevOps
Auto DevOps brings DevOps best
practices to your project by
automatically configuring software
development lifecycles. It automatically
detects, builds, tests, deploys, and
monitors applications.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Auto-scaling
The ability to automatically and
elastically scale and de-scale
infrastructure depending on traffic and
capacity variations while maintaining
control of costs.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Automated rollback
If a failure is detected during a
deployment, an operator (or an
automated process) will verify the
failure and roll back the failing release
to the previous known working state.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Availability
Availability is the proportion of time a
system is in a functioning condition and
therefore available (to users) to be
used.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Backdoor
A backdoor bypasses the usual
authentication used to access a system.
Its purpose is to grant the
cybercriminals future access to the
system even if the organization has
remediated the vulnerability initially
used to attack the system.
DevSecOps Foundation
Backlog
Requirements for a system expressed
as a prioritized list of product backlog
items usually in the form of 'User
Stories'. The product backlog is
prioritized by the Product Owner and
should include functional, non-
functional, and technical team-
generated requirements.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 10
Basic Security Hygiene
A common set of minimum-security
practices that must be applied to all
environments without exception.
Practices include basic network security
(firewalls and monitoring), hardening,
vulnerability and patch management,
logging and monitoring, basic policies
and enforcement (may be
implemented under a "policies as
code" approach), and identity and
access management.
DevSecOps Foundation
Batch Sizes
Refers to the volume of features
involved in a single code release.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Bateson Stakeholder
Map
A tool for mapping stakeholder's
engagement with the initiative in
progress.
DevOps Leader
Behavior Driven
Development (BDD)
Test cases are created by simulating an
EUT's externally observable inputs, and
outputs. Example tool: Cucumber.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Beyond Budgeting
A management model that looks
beyond command-and-control towards
a more empowered and adaptive state.
DevOps Leader
Black-Box
Test case only uses knowledge of
externally observable behaviors of an
EUT.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Blameless post
mortems
A process through which engineers
whose actions have contributed to a
service incident can give a detailed
account of what they did without fear
of punishment or retribution.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 11
Blast Radius
Used for impact analysis of service
incidents. When a particular IT service
fails, the users, customers, other
dependent services that are affected.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Blue/Green Testing or
Deployments
Taking software from the final stage of
testing to live production using two
environments labeled Blue and Green.
Once the software is working in the
green environment, switch the router
so that all incoming requests go to the
green environment - the blue one is
now idle.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Bug
An error or defect in software that
results in an unexpected or system-
degrading condition.
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Bureaucratic Culture
Bureaucratic organizations are likely to
use standard channels or procedures
which may be insufficient in a crisis
(Westrum).
DevOps Leader
Bursting
Public cloud resources are added as
needed to temporarily increase the
total computing capacity of a private
cloud.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Business Case
Justification for a proposed project or
undertaking on the basis of its
expected commercial benefit.
DevOps Leader
Business Continuity
Business continuity is an organization's
ability to ensure operations and core
business functions are not severely
impacted by a disaster or unplanned
incident that takes critical services
offline.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 12
Business
Transformation
Changing how the business functions.
Making this a reality means changing
culture, processes, and technologies in
order to better align everyone around
delivering on the organization's
mission.
DevSecOps Foundation
Business Value
In management, an informal term that
includes all forms of value that
determine the health and well-being of
the firm in the long run.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Cadence
Flow or rhythm of events.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader,
DevSecOps Foundation
CALMS Model
Considered the pillars or values of
DevOps: Culture, Automation, Lean,
Measurement, Sharing (as put forth by
John Willis, Damon Edwards, and Jez
Humble).
DevOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Canary Testing
A canary (also called a canary test) is a
push of code changes to a small
number of end-users who have not
volunteered to test anything. Similar to
incremental rollout, it is where a small
portion of the user base is updated to a
new version first. This subset, the
canaries, then serve as the proverbial
“canary in the coal mine”. If something
goes wrong then a release is rolled
back and only a small subset of the
users are impacted.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Capacity
An estimate of the total amount of
engineering time available for a given
Sprint.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 13
Capacity Test
The purpose of the test is to determine
if the EUT can handle expected loads
such as number of users, number of
sessions, aggregate bandwidth.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Capture-Replay
Test cases are created by capturing live
interactions with the EUT, in a format
that can be replayed by a tool. E.g.
Selenium
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Carrots
Positive incentives, for encouraging
and rewarding desired behaviors.
DevSecOps Foundation
Chain of Goals
A method designed by Roman Pichler
of ensuring that goals are linked and
shared at all levels through the product
development process.
DevOps Leader
Change
Addition, modification, or removal of
anything that could have an effect on IT
services. (ITIL
®
definition)
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Change Failure Rate
A measure of the percentage of
failed/rolled back changes.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Change Fatigue
A general sense of apathy or passive
resignation towards organizational
changes by individuals or teams.
DevSecOps Foundation
Change Lead Time
A measure of the time from a request
for a change to the delivery of the
change.
DevOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 14
Change Leader
Development Model
Jim Canterucci's model for five levels of
change leader capability.
DevOps Leader
Change Management
The process that controls all changes
throughout their lifecycle. (ITIL
definition)
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Change Management
(Organizational)
An approach to shifting or
transitioning individuals, teams &
organizations from a current state to a
desired future state. Includes the
process, tools & techniques to manage
the people-side of change to achieve
the required business outcome(s).
DevOps Leader
Change-based Test
Selection Method
Tests are selected according to a
criterion that matches attributes of
tests to attributes of the code that is
changed in a build.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, Continuous
Testing Foundation
Chaos Engineering
The discipline of experimenting on a
software system in production in order
to build confidence in the system's
capability to withstand turbulent and
unexpected conditions.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Chapter Lead
A squad line manager in the Spotify
model who is responsible for
traditional people management duties
is involved in day-to-day work and
grows individual and chapter
competence.
DevOps Leader
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 15
Chapters
A small family of people having similar
skills and who work within the same
general competency area within the
same tribe. Chapters meet regularly to
discuss challenges and areas of
expertise in order to promote sharing,
skill development, re-use, and problem-
solving.
DevOps Leader
ChatOps
An approach to managing technical
and business operations (coined by
GitHub) that involves a combination of
group chat and integration with
DevOps tools. Example tools include
Atlassian HipChat/Stride, Microsoft
Teams, Slack.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, Site
Reliability
Engineering, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Check-in
The action of submitting a software
change into a system version
management system.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
CI Regression Test
A subset of regression tests that are
run immediately after a software
component is built. Same as Smoke
Test.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Clear-Box
Same as Glass-Box Testing and White-
Box Testing.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Cloud Computing
The practice of using remote servers
hosted on the internet to host
applications rather than local servers in
a private data center.
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 16
Cloud-Native
Native cloud applications (NCA) are
designed for cloud computing.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Cloudbees
Cloudbees is a commercially supported
proprietary automation framework tool
that works with and enhances Jenkins
by providing enterprise levels support
and add-on functionality.
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Cluster Cost
Optimization
Tools like Kubecost, Replex, Cloudability
use monitoring to analyze container
clusters and optimize the resource
deployment model.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Cluster Monitoring
Tools that let you know the health of
your deployment environments
running in clusters such as Kubernetes.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Clustering
A group of computers (called nodes or
members) work together as a cluster
connected through a fast network
acting as a single system.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Code Coverage
A measure of white box test coverage
by counting code units that are
executed by a test. The code unit may
be a code statement, a code branch, or
control path or data path through a
code module.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Code Quality
See also static code analysis, Sonar and
Checkmarks are examples of tools that
automatically check the seven main
dimensions of code quality –
comments, architecture, duplication,
unit test coverage, complexity,
potential defects, language rules.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 17
Code Repository
A repository where developers can
commit and collaborate on their code.
It also tracks historical versions and
potentially identifies conflicting
versions of the same code. Also
referred to as "repository" or "repo."
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Code Review
Software engineers inspect each
other's source code to detect coding or
code formatting errors.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Cognitive Bias
Cognitive bias is a limitation in
objective thinking that is caused by the
tendency for the human brain to
perceive information through a filter of
personal experience and preferences:
a systematic pattern of deviation from
norm or rationality in judgment.
DevOps Leader
Collaboration
People jointly working with others
towards a common goal.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Collaborative Culture
A culture that applies to everyone
which incorporates an expected set of
behaviors, language, and accepted
ways of working with each other
reinforcement by leadership.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Compatibility Test
Test with the purpose to determine if
an EUT interoperates with another EUT
such as peer-to-peer applications or
protocols.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 18
Configuration
Management
Configuration management (CM) is a
systems engineering process for
establishing and maintaining
consistency of a product's
performance, functional, and physical
attributes with its requirements,
design, and operational information
throughout its life.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Conformance Test
The purpose of the test is to determine
if an EUT complies with a standard.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Constraint
Limitation or restriction; something
that constrains. See also bottleneck.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
Container
A way of packaging software into
lightweight, stand-alone, executable
packages including everything needed
to run it (code, runtime, system tools,
system libraries, settings) for
development, shipment, and
deployment.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Container Network
Security
Used to prove that any app that can be
run on a container cluster with any
other app can be confident that there is
no unintended use of the other app or
any unintended network traffic
between them.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Container Registry
Secure and private registry for
Container images. Typically allowing for
easy upload and download of images
from the build tools. Docker Hub,
Artifactory, Nexus are examples.
Site Reliability
Engineering
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 19
Container Scanning
When building a Container image for
your application, tools can run a
security scan to ensure it does not have
any known vulnerability in the
environment where your code is
shipped. Blackduck, Synopsis, Synk,
Claire, and Klar are examples.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Continual Service
Improvement (CSI)
One of the ITIL Core publications and a
stage of the service lifecycle.
DevOps Foundation
Continuous Delivery
(CD)
A methodology that focuses on making
sure software is always in a releasable
state throughout its lifecycle.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Continuous
Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Continuous Delivery
(CD) Architect
A person who is responsible to guide
the implementation and best practices
for a continuous delivery pipeline.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation
Continuous Delivery
Pipeline
A continuous delivery pipeline refers to
the series of processes that are
performed on product changes in
stages. A change is injected at the
beginning of the pipeline. A change
may be new versions of code, data, or
images for applications. Each stage
processes the artifacts resulting from
the prior stage. The last stage results in
deployment to production.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation
Course, DevOps
Leader, Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Continuous Delivery
Pipeline Stage
Each process in a continuous delivery
pipeline. These are not standard.
Examples are Design: determine
implementation changes; Creation:
implement an unintegrated version of
design changes; Integration: merge
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 20
Continuous
Deployment
A set of practices that enable every
change that passes automated tests to
be automatically deployed to
production.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Continuous Flow
Smoothly moving people or products
from the first step of a process to the
last with minimal (or no) buffers
between steps.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Continuous
Improvement
Based on Deming's Plan-Do-Check-Act,
a model for ensuring ongoing efforts to
improve products, processes, and
services.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Continuous Integration
(CI)
A development practice that requires
developers to merge their code into
trunk or master ideally at least daily
and perform tests (i.e. unit, integration,
and acceptance) at every code commit.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps
Foundation, Continuous
Testing
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Continuous Integration
Tools
Tools that provide an immediate
feedback loop by regularly merging,
building, and testing code. Example
tools include Atlassian Bamboo,
Jenkins, Microsoft VSTS/Azure DevOps,
TeamCity.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 21
Continuous Monitoring
(CM)
This is a class of terms relevant to
logging, notifications, alerts, displays,
and analysis of test results information.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Continuous Testing
(CT)
This is a class of terms relevant to the
testing and verification of an EUT in a
DevOps environment.
DevOps
Foundation, Continuous
Delivery Ecosystem
Foundation, Continuous
Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Conversation Café
Conversation Cafés are open, hosted
conversations in cafés as well as
conferences and classrooms—
anywhere people gather to make sense
of our world.
DevOps Leader
Conway's Law
Organizations that design systems are
constrained to produce designs that
are copies of the communication
structures of these organizations.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Leader, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Cooperation vs.
Competition
The key cultural value shift toward
being highly collaborative and
cooperative, and away from internal
competitiveness and divisiveness.
DevSecOps Foundation
COTS
Commercial-off-the-shelf solution
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Critical Success Factor
(CSF)
Something that must happen for an IT
service, process, plan, project or other
activity to succeed.
DevSecOps Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 22
Cultural Iceberg
A metaphor that visualizes the
difference between observable (above
the water) and non-observable (below
the waterline) elements of culture.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Culture (Organizational
Culture)
The values and behaviors that contribut
e to the unique psychosocial
environment of an organization.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Cumulative Flow
Diagram
A cumulative flow diagram is a tool
used in agile software development
and lean product development. It is an
area graph that depicts the quantity of
work in a given state, showing arrivals,
time in queue, quantity in a queue, and
departure.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Current State Map
A form of value stream map that helps
you identify how the current process
works and where the disconnects are.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Customer Reliability
Engineer (CRE)
CRE is what you get when you take the
principles and lessons of SRE and apply
them to customers.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Cycle Time
A measure of the time from the start of
work to ready for delivery.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader.
DevSecOps Foundation,
Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Daily Scrum
Daily timeboxed event of 15 minutes or
less for the Team to replan the next day
of work during a Sprint.
DevOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 23
Dashboard
Graphical display of summarized data
e.g., deployment frequency, velocity,
test results.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DAST (Dynamic
Application Security
Testing)
Dynamic application security testing
(DAST) is a process of testing an
application or software product in an
operating state.
DevSecOps
Foundation, Site
Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Data Loss Protection
(DLP)
Tools that prevent files and content
from being removed from within a
service environment or organization.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Database Reliability
Engineer (DBRE)
A person responsible for keeping
database systems that support all user-
facing services in production running
smoothly.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Defect Density
The number of faults found in a unit
E.g. # defects per KLOC, # defects per
change.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Definition of Done
A shared understanding of
expectations that an Increment or
backlog item must live up to.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Leader, Value Stream
Management Foundation
Delivery Cadence
The frequency of deliveries. E.g. #
deliveries per day, per week, etc.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 24
Delivery Package
Set of release items (files, images, etc.)
that are packaged for deployment.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Deming Cycle
A four-stage cycle for process
management, attributed to W. Edwards
Deming. Also called Plan-Do-Check-Act
(PDCA).
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Dependency Firewall
Many projects depend on packages
that may come from unknown or
unverified providers, introducing
potential security vulnerabilities. There
are tools to scan dependencies but that
is after they are downloaded. These
tools prevent those vulnerabilities from
being downloaded to begin with.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Dependency Proxy
For many organizations, it is desirable
to have a local proxy for frequently
used upstream images/packages. In
the case of CI/CD, the proxy is
responsible for receiving a request and
returning the upstream image from a
registry, acting as a pull-through cache.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Dependency Scanning
Used to automatically find security
vulnerabilities in your dependencies
while you are developing and testing
your applications. Synopsys,
Gemnasium, Retire.js, and bundler-
audit are popular tools in this area.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Deployment
The installation of a specified version of
software to a given environment (e.g.,
promoting a new build into
production).
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 25
Design for Testability
An EUT is designed with features that
enable it to be tested.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Design Principles
Principles for designing, organizing,
and managing a DevOps delivery
operating model.
DevOps Leader
Dev
Individuals involved in software
development activities such as
application and software engineers.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Developer (Dev)
An individual who has the responsibility
to develop changes for an EUT.
Alternate: Individuals involved in
software development activities such as
application and software engineers.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, Continuous
Testing Foundation
Development Test
Ensuring that the developer's test
environment is a good representation
of the production test environment.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Device Under Test
(DUT)
The DUT is a device (e.g. router or
switch) being tested.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 26
DevOps
A cultural and professional movement
that stresses communication,
collaboration, and integration between
software developers and IT operations
professionals while automating the
process of software delivery and
infrastructure changes. It aims at
establishing a culture and environment
where building, testing, and releasing
software, can happen rapidly,
frequently, and more reliably."
(Wikipedia)
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Coach
Help teams master Agile development
and DevOps practices; enables
productive ways of working and
collaboration.
DevOps Leader
DevOps Infrastructure
The entire set of tools and facilities that
make up the DevOps system. Includes
CI, CT, CM, and CD tools.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Kaizen
Kaizen is a Japanese word that closely
translates to "change for better," the
idea of continuous improvement—
large or small—involving all employees
and crossing organizational
boundaries. Damon Edwards' DevOps
Kaizen shows how making small,
incremental improvements (little J's)
has an improved impact on productivity
long term.
DevOps Leader
DevOps Pipeline
The entire set of interconnected
processes that make up a DevOps
Infrastructure.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 27
DevOps Score
A metric showing DevOps adoption
across an organization and the
corresponding impact on delivery
velocity.
Site Reliability
Engineering
DevOps Toolchain
The tools needed to support a DevOps
continuous development and delivery
cycle from idea to value realization.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Continuous
Testing Foundation,
Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevSecOps
A mindset that "everyone is
responsible for security" with the goal
of safely distributing security decisions
at speed and scale to those who hold
the highest level of context without
sacrificing the safety required.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Digital Transformation
The adoption of digital technology by a
company to improve business
processes, value for customers, and
innovation.
DevOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Digital Value Stream
A value stream is anything that delivers
a product or a service. A digital value
stream is one that delivers a digital
product or service.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
Distributed Version
Control System (DVCS)
The software revisions are stored in a
distributed revision control system
(DRCS), also known as a distributed
version control system (DVCS).
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 28
DMZ (De-Militarized
Zone)
A DMZ in network security parlance is a
network zone in between the public
internet and internal protected
resources. Any application, server, or
service (including APIs) that need to be
exposed externally are typically placed
in a DMZ. It is not uncommon to have
multiple DMZs in parallel.
DevSecOps Foundation
Dynamic Analysis
Dynamic analysis is the testing of an
application by executing data in real-
time with the objective of detecting
defects while it is in operation, rather
than by repeatedly examining the code
offline.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Dynamic Application
Security Testing (DAST)
Dynamic application security testing
(DAST) is a process of testing an
application or software product in an
operating state.
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
EggPlant
Automated function and regression
testing of enterprise applications.
Licensed by Test Plant.
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Elastic Infrastructure
Elasticity is a term typically used in
cloud computing, to describe the ability
of an IT infrastructure to quickly
expand or cut back capacity and
services without hindering or
jeopardizing
the infrastructure's stability,
performance, security, governance, or
compliance protocols.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
eNPS
Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is
a way for organizations to measure
employee loyalty. The Net Promoter
Score, originally a customer service
tool, was later used internally on
employees instead of customers.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 29
Entity Under Test (EUT)
This is a class of terms that refers to the
names of types of entities that are
being tested. These terms are often
abbreviated to the form xUT where "x"
represents a type of entity under test.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Ephemeral Elastic
Infrastructure
The concept of infrastructure being
transitory, existing only briefly as
needed to serve the needs of a DevOps
process that needs infrastructure while
it is executing.
DevOps Engineering
Foundation
Erickson (Stages of
Psychosocial
Development)
Erik Erikson (1950, 1963) proposed a
psychoanalytic theory of psychosocial
development comprising eight stages
from infancy to adulthood. During each
stage, the person experiences a
psychosocial crisis which could have a
positive or negative outcome for
personality development.
DevSecOps Foundation
Error Budget
The error budget provides a clear,
objective metric that determines how
unreliable a service is allowed to be
within a specific time period.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Error Budget Policies
An error budget policy enumerates the
activity a team takes when they've
exhausted their error budget for a
particular service in a particular time
period.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Error Tracking
Tools to easily discover and show the
errors that the application may be
generating, along with the associated
data.
Site Reliability
Engineering
External Automation
Scripts and automation outside of a
service that is intended to reduce toil.
Site Reliability
Engineering
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 30
Fail Early
A DevOps tenet referring to the
preference to find critical problems as
early as possible in a development and
delivery pipeline.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Fail Often
A DevOps tenet which emphasizes a
preference to find critical problems as
fast as possible and therefore
frequently.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Failure Rate
Fail verdicts per unit of time.
DevOps Foundation,
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
False Negative
A test incorrectly reports a verdict of
"fail" when the EUT actually passed the
purpose of the test.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
False Positive
A test incorrectly reports a verdict of
"pass" when the EUT actually failed the
purpose of the test.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Feature Toggle
The practice of using software switches
to hide or activate features. This
enables continuous integration and
testing a feature with selected
stakeholders.
DevOps Foundation,
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 31
Federated Identity
A central identity used for access to a
wide range of applications, systems,
and services, but with a particular skew
toward web-based applications. Also,
often referenced as Identity-as-a-
Service (IDaas). Any identity that can be
reused across multiple sites,
particularly via SAML or OAuth
authentication mechanisms.
DevSecOps Foundation
Fire Drills
A planned failure testing process
focussed on the operation of live
services including service failure testing
as well as communication,
documentation, and other human
factor testing.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Flow
How people, products, or information
move through a process. Flow is the
first way of The Three Ways.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Flow of Value
A form of map that shows the end-to-
end value stream. This view is usually
not available within the enterprise.
DevOps Leader. Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Framework
The backbone for plugging in tools.
Launches automated tasks, collects
results from automated tasks.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 32
Freedom and
Responsibility
A core cultural value that with the
freedom of self-management (such as
afforded by DevOps) comes the
responsibility to be diligent, to follow
the advice process, and to take
ownership of both successes and
failures.
DevSecOps Foundation
Frequency
How often an application is released.
DevOps Leader, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Functional Testing
Tests to determine if the functional
operation of the service is as expected.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Future State Map
A form of value stream map that helps
you develop and communicate what
the target end state should look like
and how to tackle the necessary
changes.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Fuzzing
Fuzzing or fuzz testing is an automated
software testing practice that inputs
invalid, unexpected, or random data
into applications.
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Gated Commits
Define and obtain consensus for the
criterion of changes promoted between
all CD pipeline stages such as Dev to CI
stage / CI to packaging/delivery stage /
Delivery to Deployment/Production
stage.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Generative (DevOps)
Culture
In a generative organization, alignment
takes place through identification with
the mission. The individual ''buys into''
what he or she is supposed to do and
its effect on the outcome. Generative
organizations tend to be proactive in
getting the information to the right
people by any means. necessary.
(Westrum)
DevOps Leader
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 33
Generativity
A cultural view wherein long-term
outcomes are of primary focus, which
in turn drives investments and
cooperation that enable an
organization to achieve those
outcomes.
DevSecOps Foundation
Glass-Box
Same as Clear-Box Testing and White-
Box Testing.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Goal-seeking tests
The purpose of the test is to determine
an EUT's performance boundaries,
using incrementally stresses until the
EUT reaches peak performance. E.g.
Determine the maximum throughput
that can be handled without errors.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Golden Circle
A model by Simon Sinek that
emphasizes an understanding of the
business' "why" before focusing on the
"what" and "how".
DevOps Foundation
Golden Image
A template for a virtual machine (VM),
virtual desktop, server, or hard disk
drive. (TechTarget)
DevSecOps Foundation
Goleman's Six Styles of
Leadership
Daniel Goleman (2002) created the Six
Leadership Styles and found, in his
research, that leaders used one of
these styles at any one time.
DevOps Leader
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 34
Governance, Risk
Management and
Compliance (GRC)
A team or software platform intended
for concentrating governance,
compliance, and risk management
data, including policies, compliance
requirements, vulnerability data, and
sometimes asset inventory, business
continuity plans, etc. In essence, a
specialized document and data
repository for security governance. Or
a team of people who specialize in
IT/security governance, risk
management, and compliance
activities. Most often non-technical
business analyst resources.
DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Gray-Box
Test cases use a limited knowledge of
the internal design structure of the
EUT.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
GUI testing
The purpose of the test is to determine
if the graphical user interface operates
as expected.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Guilds
A "community of interest" group that
welcomes anyone and usually cuts
across an entire organization. Similar to
a Community of Practice.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader
Hand Offs
The procedure for transferring the
responsibility of a particular task from
one individual or team to another.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 35
Hardening
Securing a server or infrastructure
environment by removing or disabling
unnecessary software, updating to
known good versions of the operating
system, restricting network-level access
to only that which is needed,
configuring logging in order to capture
alerts, configuring appropriate access
management, and installing
appropriate security tools.
DevSecOps Foundation
Helm Chart Registry
Helm charts are what describe related
Kubernetes resources. Artifactory and
Codefresh support a registry for
maintaining master records of Helm
Charts.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Heritage Reliability
Engineer (HRE)
Applying the principles and practices of
SRE to legacy applications and
environments.
Site Reliability
Engineering
High-Trust Culture
Organizations with a high-trust culture
encourage good information flow,
cross-functional collaboration, shared
responsibilities, learning from failures
and new ideas.
DevOps Foundation
Horizontal Scaling
Computing resources are scaled wider
to increase the volume of processing.
E.g. Add more computers and run more
tasks in parallel.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Hypothesis-Backlog
A collection of requirements expressed
as experiments.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
Hypothesis-Driven
Development (HDD)
A prototype methodology that allows
product designers to develop, test, and
rebuild a product until it’s acceptable
to the users.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 36
Idempotent
CM tools (e.g., Puppet, Chef, Ansible,
and Salt) claim that they are
'idempotent' by allowing the desired
state of a server to be defined as code
or declarations and automate steps
necessary to consistently achieve the
defined state time-after-time.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Identity
The unique name of a person, device,
or the combination of both that is
recognized by a digital system. Also
referred to as an "account" or "user."
DevSecOps Foundation
Identity and Access
Management (IAM)
Policies, procedures, and tools for
ensuring the right people have the
right access to technology resources.
DevSecOps Foundation
Identity as a Service
(IDaaS)
Identity and access management
services that are offered through the
cloud or on a subscription basis.
DevSecOps Foundation
Image-based test
selection method
Build images are pre-assigned test
cases. Tests cases are selected for a
build by matching the image changes
resulting from a build.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Immersive learning
A learning approach that guides teams
with coaching and practice to help
them learn to work in a new way.
DevOps Leader
Immutable
An immutable object is an object whose
state cannot be modified after it is
created. The antonym is
a mutable object, which can be
modified after it is created.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Immutable
Infrastructures
Instead of instantiating an instance
(server, container, etc.), with error-
prone, time-consuming patches and
upgrades (i.e. mutations), replace it
with another instance to introduce
changes or ensure proper behavior.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 37
Impact-Driven
Development (IDD)
A software development methodology
that takes small steps towards
achieving both impact and vision.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
Implementation Under
Test
The EUT is a software implementation.
E.g. Embedded program is being
tested.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Improvement Kata
A structured way to create a culture of
continuous learning and improvement.
(In Japanese business, Kata is the idea
of doing things the "correct" way. An
organization's culture can be
characterized as its Kata through its
consistent role modeling, teaching and
coaching.)
DevOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Incentive model
A system designed to motivate people
to complete tasks toward achieving
objectives. The system may employ
either positive or negative
consequences for motivation.
DevSecOps Foundation
Incident
Any unplanned interruption to an IT
service or reduction in the quality of an
IT service. Includes events that disrupt
or could disrupt the service. (ITIL
definition)
DevSecOps Foundation
Incident Management
A process that restores normal service
operation as quickly as possible to
minimize business impact and ensure
that agreed levels of service quality are
maintained. (ITIL definition). Involves
capturing the who, what, when of
service incidents and the onward use of
this data in ensuring service level
objectives are being met.
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 38
Incident Response
An organized approach to addressing
and managing the aftermath of a
security breach or attack (also known
as an incident). The goal is to handle
the situation in a way that limits
damage and reduces recovery time and
costs.
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Increment
Potentially shippable completed work
that is the outcome of a Sprint.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Incremental Rollout
Deploying many small,
gradual changes to a service instead of
a few large changes. Users are
incrementally moved across to the new
version of the service until eventually
all users are moved across. Sometimes
referred to by colored environments
e.g. Blue/green deployment.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Infrastructure
All of the hardware, software, networks,
facilities, etc., required to develop, test,
deliver, monitor and control or support
IT services. The term IT infrastructure
includes all of the information
technology but not the associated
people, processes, and documentation.
(ITIL definition)
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Infrastructure as Code
(IaC)
The practice of using code (scripts) to
configure and manage infrastructure.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 39
Infrastructure Test
The purpose of the test is to verify the
framework for EUT operating. E.g.
verify specific operating system utilities
function as expected in the target
environment.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Infrastructure-as-a-
Service (IaaS)
On-demand access to a shared pool of
configurable computing resources.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Insights Driven
An insight-driven organization embeds
analysis, data, and reasoning into the
decision-making process, every day.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
Integrated
development
environment (IDE)
An integrated development
environment (IDE) is a software suite
that consolidates the basic tools
developers need to write and test
software. Typically, an IDE contains a
code editor, a compiler or interpreter,
and a debugger that the developer
accesses through a single graphical
user interface (GUI). An IDE may be a
standalone application, or it may be
included as part of one or more
existing and compatible applications.
(TechTarget)
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Integrated
development
environment (IDE) 'lint'
checks
Linting is the process of running a
program that will analyze code for
potential errors (e.g., formatting
discrepancies, non-adherence to
coding standards and conventions,
logical errors).
DevSecOps Foundation
Internet of Things
A network of physical devices that
connect to the internet and potentially
to each other through web-based
wireless services.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 40
Internal Automation
Scripts and automation delivered as
part of the service that is intended to
reduce toil.
Site Reliability
Engineering
INVEST
A mnemonic was created by Bill Wake
as a reminder of the characteristics of a
quality user story.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
ISO 31000
A family of standards that provide
principles and generic guidelines on
risk management.
DevSecOps Foundation
Issue Management
A process for capturing, tracking, and
resolving bugs and issues throughout
the software development lifecycle.
DevSecOps Foundation
IT Service Management
(ITSM)
Adopting a process approach towards
management, focusing on customer
needs and IT services for customers
rather than IT systems, and stressing
continual improvement. (Wikipedia)
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, Site
Reliability
Engineering, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
iTest
Tool licensed by Spirent
Communications for creating
automated test cases.
Continuous Testing
Foundation
ITIL
Provides a best practices framework
that organizations can adapt to deliver
and maintain IT services to provide
optimal value for all stakeholders,
including the customer.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, Site
Reliability
Engineering, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 41
Jenkins
Jenkins is a freeware tool. It is the most
popular master automation framework
tool, especially for continuous
integration task automation. Jenkins
task automation centers around timed
processes. Many test tools and other
tools offer plugins to simplify
integration with Jenkins.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, Continuous
Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Kaizen
The practice of continuous
improvement.
DevOps Foundation,
Value Stream
Management Foundation
Kanban
Method of work that pulls the flow of
work through a process at a
manageable pace.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation
Kanban Board
Tool that helps teams organize,
visualize and manage work.
DevOps Foundation
Karpman Drama
Triangle
The drama triangle is a social model of
human interaction. The triangle maps a
type of destructive interaction that can
occur between people in conflict.
DevOps Leader
Key Metrics
Something that is measured and
reported upon to help manage a
process, IT service or activity.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Key Performance
Indicator (KPI)
Key performance indicators are the
critical indicators of progress toward an
intended result, providing a focus for
improvement, and on what matters
most.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
Keywords-Based
Test cases are created using pre-
defined names that reference
programs useful for testing.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 42
Knowledge
Management
A process that ensures the right
information is delivered to the right
place or person at the right time to
enable an informed decision.
DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation
Known Error
Problem with a documented root cause
and a workaround. (ITIL definition)
DevSecOps Foundation
Kolb's Learning Styles
David Kolb published his learning styles
model in 1984; his experiential learning
theory works on two levels: a four-
stage cycle of learning and four
separate learning styles.
DevOps Leader
Kotter's Dual Operating
System
John Kotter describes the need for a
dual operating system that combines
the entrepreneurial capability of a
network with the organizational
efficiency of traditional hierarchy.
DevOps Leader
Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open-source
container-orchestration system for
automating application deployment,
scaling, and management. It was
originally designed by Google and is
now maintained by the Cloud Native
Computing Foundation.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Kubler-Ross Change
Curve
Describes and predicts the stages of
personal and organizational reaction to
major changes.
DevOps Foundation
Lab-as-a-Service (LaaS)
Category of cloud computing services
that provides a laboratory allowing
customers to test applications without
the complexity of building and
maintaining the lab infrastructure.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Laloux (Culture Models)
Frederic Laloux created a model for
understanding organizational culture.
DevSecOps Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 43
Latency
Latency is the delay incurred in
communicating a message, the time a
message spends “on the wire”
between the initial request being
received e.g. by a server, and the
response being received e.g. by a
client.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Laws of Systems
Thinking
In his book, 'The Fifth Discipline', Peter
Senge outlines eleven laws that will
help the understanding of business
systems and to identify behaviors for
addressing complex business
problems.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Lean
Production philosophy that focuses on
reducing waste and improving the flow
of processes to improve overall
customer value.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, DevOps
Leader, DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Lean (adjective)
Spare, economical. Lacking richness or
abundance.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Lean Canvas
Lean Canvas is a 1-page business plan
template.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Lean Enterprise
An organization that strategically
applies the key ideas behind lean
production across the enterprise.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 44
Lean IT
Applying the key ideas behind lean
production to the development and
management of IT products and
services.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Lean Manufacturing
Lean production philosophy derived
mostly from the Toyota Production
System.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
Lean Product
Development
Lean Product Development, or LPD,
utilizes Lean principles to meet the
challenges of Product Development.
DevOps Leader
Lean Startup
A system for developing a business or
product in the most efficient way
possible to reduce the risk of failure.
DevOps Leader
License Scanning
Tools, such as Blackduck and Synopsis,
that check that licenses of your
dependencies are compatible with your
application and approve or blacklist
them.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Little's Law
A theorem by John Little that states that
the long-term average number L of
customers in a stationary system is
equal to the long-term average
effective arrival rate λ multiplied by the
average time W that a customer spends
in the system.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
LoadRunner
A tool used to test applications,
measuring system behavior, and
performance under load. Licensed by
HP.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 45
Log
Serialized report of details such as test
activities and EUT console logs.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Log Management
The collective processes and policies
used to administer and facilitate the
generation, transmission, analysis,
storage, archiving, and ultimate
disposal of the large volumes of log
data created within an information
system.
DevSecOps Foundation
Logging
The capture, aggregation, and storage
of all logs associated with system
performance including, but not limited
to, process calls, events, user data,
responses, error, and status codes.
Logstash and Nagios are popular
examples.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Logic Bomb (Slag Code)
A string of malicious code used to
cause harm to a system when the
programmed conditions are met.
DevSecOps Foundation
Longevity Test
The purpose of the test is to determine
if a complete system performs as
expected over an extended period of
time
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Machine Learning
Data analysis that uses algorithms that
learn from data.
DevOps Foundation,
Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Malware
A program designed to gain access to
computer systems, normally for the
benefit of some third party, without the
user’s permission
DevSecOps Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 46
Many-factor
Authentication
The practice of using at least 2 factors
for authentication. The two factors can
be of the same class.
DevSecOps Foundation
Mean Time Between
Deploys
Used to measure deployment
frequency.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Mean Time Between
Failures (MTBF)
The average time that a CI or IT service
can perform its agreed function
without interruption. Often used to
measure reliability. Measured from
when the CI or service starts working,
until the time it fails (uptime). (ITIL
definition)
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation,
Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Mean Time to Detect
Defects (MTTD)
Average time required to detect a failed
component or device.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Mean Time to
Discovery
How long a vulnerability or software
bug/defect exists before it's identified.
DevSecOps Foundation
Mean Time to Patch
How long it takes to apply patches to
environments once a vulnerability has
been identified.
DevSecOps Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 47
Mean Time to
Repair/Recover (MTTR)
Average time required to
repair/recover a failed component or
device. MTTR does not include the time
required to recover or restore service.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Site
Reliability Engineering
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Mean Time to Restore
Service (MTRS)
Used to measure time from when the
CI or IT service fails until it is fully
restored and delivering its normal
functionality (downtime). Often used to
measure maintainability. (ITIL
definition).
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Mental Models
A mental model is an explanation of
someone's thought process about how
something works in the real world.
DevOps Leader
Merge
The action of integrating software
changes together into a software
version management system.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Metric
Something that is measured and
reported upon to help manage a
process, IT service, or activity.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Metrics
This is a class of terms relevant to
measurements used to monitor the
health of a product or infrastructure.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 48
Microprocess
A distinct activity that can be defined,
designed, implemented, and managed
independently and is generally
associated with a primary service
management practice. A microprocess
may be integrated with other service
management practices.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Microprocess
Architecture
A collection of integrated
microprocesses that collectively
perform all of the activities necessary
for an end-to-end service management
practice to be successful.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Microservices
A software architecture that is
composed of smaller modules that
interact through APIs and can be
updated without affecting the entire
system.
DevOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Mindset
A person's usual attitude or mental
state is their mindset.
DevOps Leader
Minimum Viable
Process
The least amount needed in order for
this process or microprocess to meet
its Definition of Done.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Minimum Viable
Product
Most minimal version of a product that
can be released and still provide
enough value that people are willing to
use it.
DevOps Leader
Mock Object
Mock is a method/object that simulates
the behavior of a real method/object in
controlled ways. Mock objects are used
in unit testing. Often a method under a
test calls other external services or
methods within it. These are called
dependencies.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 49
Model
Representation of a system, process, IT
service, CI, etc. that is used to help
understand or predict future behavior.
In the context of processes, models
represent pre-defined steps for
handling specific types of transactions.
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Model-Based
Test cases are automatically derived
from a model of the entity under test.
Example tool: Tricentis
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Monitoring
The use of a hardware or software
component to monitor the system
resources and performance of a
computer service.
Site Reliability
Engineering, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Monitoring Tools
Tools that allow IT organizations to
identify specific issues of specific
releases and to understand the impact
on end-users.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Monolithic
A software system is called
"monolithic" if it has a monolithic
architecture, in which functionally
distinguishable aspects (for example
data input and output, data processing,
error handling, and the user interface)
are all interwoven, rather than
containing architecturally separate
components.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Multi-factor
Authentication
The practice of using 2 or more factors
for authentication. Often used
synonymously with 2-factor
Authentication.
DevSecOps Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 50
Multi-cloud
Multi-cloud DevOps solutions provide
on-demand multi-tenant access to
development and test environments.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Network Reliability
Engineer (NRE)
Someone who applies a reliability
engineering approach to measure and
automate the reliability of networks.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Neuroplasticity
Describes the ability of the brain to
form and reorganize synaptic
connections, especially in response to
learning or experience or following
injury.
DevOps Leader
Neuroscience
The study of the brain and nervous
system.
DevOps Leader
Non-functional
requirements
Requirements that specify criteria that
can be used to judge the operation of a
system, rather than specific behaviors
or functions (e.g., availability, reliability,
maintainability, supportability);
qualities of a system.
DevOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Non-functional tests
Defined as a type of service testing
intending to check non-functional
aspects such as performance, usability,
and reliability of a software service.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Object Under Test
(OUT)
The EUT is a software object or class of
objects.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Observability
Observability is focused on
externalizing as much data as you can
about the whole service allowing us to
infer what the current state of that
service is.
Site Reliability
Engineering, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 51
Objectives and Key
Results (OKRs)
Objectives and key results is a goal-
setting framework used by individuals,
teams, and organizations to define
measurable goals and track their
outcomes.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
On-call
Being on-call means someone being
available during a set period of time
and being ready to respond to
production incidents during that time
with appropriate urgency.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Open Source
Software that is distributed with its
source code so that end-user
organizations and vendors can modify
it for their own purposes.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Operations (Ops)
Individuals involved in the daily
operational activities needed to deploy
and manage systems and services such
as quality assurance analysts, release
managers, system and network
administrators, information security
officers, IT operations specialists, and
service desk analysts.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Operations
Management
The function that performs the daily
activities needed to deliver and support
IT services and the supporting IT
infrastructure at the agreed levels.
(ITIL)
DevSecOps Foundation
Ops
Individuals involved in the daily
operational activities needed to deploy
and manage systems and services such
as quality assurance analysts, release
managers, system and network
administrators, information security
officers, IT operations specialists, and
service desk analysts.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 52
Orchestration
An approach to building automation
that interfaces or "orchestrates"
multiple tools together to form a
toolchain.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
Organization Culture
A system of shared values,
assumptions, beliefs, and norms that
unite the members of an organization.
DevOps Leader, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Organization Model
For DevOps, an approach that is not a
dominator hierarchy but instead a
Distributed Autonomous Organization
(DAO).
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Organizational Change
Efforts to adapt the behavior of
humans within an organization to meet
new structures, processes, or
requirements.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
OS Virtualization
A method for splitting a server into
multiple partitions called "containers"
or "virtual environments" in order to
prevent applications from interfering
with each other.
DevOps Foundation
Outcome
Intended or actual results.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Outcome Mapping
A methodology for planning,
monitoring, and evaluating
development initiatives in order to
bring about sustainable change.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
Package Registry
A repository for software packages,
artifacts, and their corresponding
metadata. Can store files produced by
an organization itself or for third-party
binaries. Artifactory and Nexus are
amongst the most popular.
Site Reliability
Engineering
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 53
Pages
Something for creating supporting web
pages automatically as part of a CI/CD
pipeline.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Patch
A software update designed to address
(mitigate/remediate) a bug or
weakness.
DevSecOps Foundation
Patch management
The process of identifying and
implementing patches.
DevSecOps Foundation
Pathological Culture
Pathological cultures tend to view
information as a personal resource, to
be used in political power struggles
(Westrum).
DevOps Leader, Site
Reliability Engineering
Penetration Testing
An authorized simulated attack on a
computer system that looks for security
weaknesses, potentially gaining access
to the system's features and data.
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
People Changes
Focuses on changing attitudes,
behaviors, skills, or performance of
employees.
DevOps Leader
Performance Test
The purpose of the test is to determine
an EUT meets its system performance
criterion or to determine what a
system's performance capabilities are.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Plan-Do-Check-Act
A four-stage cycle for process
management and improvement
attributed to W. Edwards Deming.
Sometimes called the Deming Cycle or
PDCA.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 54
Platform-as-a-Service
(PaaS)
Category of cloud computing services
that provides a platform allowing
customers to develop, run, and
manage applications without the
complexity of building and maintaining
the infrastructure.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Plugin
A pre-programmed integration
between an orchestration tool and
other tools. For example, many tools
offer plugins to integrate with Jenkins.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Policies
Formal documents that define
boundaries in terms of what the
organization may or may not do as part
of its operations.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Policy as Code
The notion that security principles and
concepts can be articulated in code
(e.g., software, configuration
management, automation) to a
sufficient degree that the need for an
extensive traditional policy framework
is greatly reduced. Standards and
guidelines should be implemented in
code and configuration, automatically
enforced, and automatically reported
on in terms of compliance, variance, or
suspected violations.
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Practice
A complete end-to-end capability for
managing a specific aspect of service
delivery (e.g. changes, incidents,
service levels).
Certified Agile Service
Manager, Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Practice Backlog
A prioritized list of everything that
needs to be designed or improved for a
practice including current and future
requirements.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 55
Practice/Microprocess
Planning
A high-level event to define the goals,
objectives, inputs, outcomes, activities,
stakeholders, tools, and other aspects
of a practice or microprocess. This
meeting is not timeboxed.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Pre-Flight
This is a class of terms that refers to
names of activities and processes that
are conducted on an EUT prior to
integration into the trunk branch.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Priority
The relative importance of an incident,
problem, or change; based on impact
and urgency. (ITIL definition)
DevSecOps Foundation
Privileged Access
Management (PAM)
Technologies that help organizations
provide secured privileged access to
critical assets and meet compliance
requirements by securing, managing,
and monitoring privileged accounts
and access. (Gartner)
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Problem
The underlying cause of one or more
incidents. (ITIL definition)
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
Process
A structured set of activities designed
to accomplish a specific objective. A
process takes inputs and turns them
into defined outputs. Related work
activities that take specific inputs and
produce specific outputs that are of
value to a customer.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Process Changes
Focuses on changes to standard IT
processes, such as software
development practices, ITIL processes,
change management, approvals, etc.
DevOps Leader
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 56
Process Owner
A role accountable for the overall
quality of a process. It may be assigned
to the same person who carries out the
Process Manager role, but the two
roles may be separate in larger
organizations. (ITIL definition)
DevSecOps Foundation
Process Standup
A time-boxed event of 15 minutes to
inspect progress towards the Sprint
Goal and identify impediments as
quickly as possible.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Processing Time
The period during which one or more
inputs are transformed into a finished
product by a manufacturing or
development procedure. (Business
Dictionary)
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Product Backlog
Prioritized list of functional and non-
functional requirements for a system
usually expressed as user stories.
DevOps Foundation
Product Owner
An individual responsible for
maximizing the value of a product and
for managing the product backlog.
Prioritizes, grooms, and owns the
backlog. Gives the squad purpose.
DevOps
Foundation, DevOps
Leader, Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Programming-Based
Test cases are created by writing code
in a programming language. E.g.
JavaScript, Python, TCL, Ruby
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Project to Product
Changing ways of working from a large
batch, waterfall project led approach, to
a small batch, agile product (or value
stream) approach.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
Provision Platforms
Tools that provide platforms for
provisioning infrastructure (e.g.,
Puppet, Chef, Salt).
DevOps Leader
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 57
Psychological Safety
Psychological safety is a shared belief
that the team is safe for interpersonal
risk-taking.
DevOps Leader
QTP
Quick Test Professional is a functional
and regression test automation tool for
software applications. Licensed by HP.
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Quality Management
Tools that handle test case planning,
test execution, defect tracking (often
into backlogs), severity, and priority
analysis. CA’s Agile Central
Site Reliability
Engineering
Ranorex
GUI test automation framework for
testing of desktop, web-based and
mobile applications. Licensed by
Ranorex.
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Ransomware
Encrypts the files on a user’s device or
a network’s storage devices. To restore
access to the encrypted files, the user
must pay a “ransom” to the
cybercriminals, typically through a
tough-to-trace electronic payment
method such as Bitcoin.
DevSecOps Foundation
RASP
Runtime Application Self-Protection
DevSecOps Foundation
Regression testing
The purpose of the test is to determine
if a new version of an EUT has broken
some things that worked previously.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Regulatory compliance
testing
The purpose of the test is to determine
if an EUT conforms to specific
regulatory requirements. E.g. verify an
EUT satisfies government regulations
for consumer credit card processing.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 58
Release
Software that is built, tested, and
deployed into the production
environment.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation,
Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Release Acceptance
Criteria
Measurable attributes for a release
package that determine whether a
release candidate is acceptable for
deployment to customers.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Release Candidate
A release package that has been
prepared for deployment, may or may
not have passed the Release.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Release Governance
Release Governance is all about the
controls and automation (security,
compliance, or otherwise) that ensure
your releases are managed in an
auditable and trackable way, in order to
meet the need of the business to
understand what is changing.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Release Management
The process that manages releases and
underpins Continuous Delivery and the
Deployment Pipeline.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Release Orchestration
Typically a deployment pipeline used to
detect any changes that will lead to
problems in production. Orchestrating
other tools will identify performance,
security, or usability issues. Tools like
Jenkins and Gitlab CI can “orchestrate”
releases.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 59
Relevance
A Continuous Testing tenet which
emphasizes a preference to focus on
the most important tests and test
results
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Reliability
A measure of how long a service,
component, or CI can perform its
agreed function without interruption.
Usually measured as MTBF or MTBSI.
(ITIL definition)
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Reliability Test
The purpose of the test is to determine
if a complete system performs as
expected under stressful and loaded
conditions over an extended period of
time.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Remediation
Action to resolve a problem found
during DevOps processes. E.g. Roll-
back changes for an EUT change that
resulted in a CT test case fail verdict.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Remediation Plan
A plan that determines the actions to
take after a failed change or release.
(ITIL definition)
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
Request for Change
(RFC)
Formal proposal to make a change. The
term RFC is often misused to mean a
change record, or the change itself.
(ITIL definition)
DevOps Foundation
Requirements
Management
Tools that handle requirements
definition, traceability, hierarchies &
dependency. Often also handles code
requirements and test cases for
requirements.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Resilience
Building an environment or
organization that is tolerant to change
and incidents.
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 60
Response Time
Response time is the total time it takes
from when a user makes a request until
they receive a response.
Site Reliability
Engineering
REST
Representation State Transfer. The
software architecture style of the
worldwide web.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Restful API
Representational state transfer (REST)
or RESTful services on a network, such
as HTTP, provide scalable
interoperability for requesting systems
to quickly and reliably access and
manipulate textual representations
(XML, HTML, JSON) of resources using
stateless operations (GET, POST, PUT,
DELETE, etc.).
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation
RESTful interface
testing
The purpose of the test is to determine
if an API satisfies its design criterion
and the expectations of the REST
architecture.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Return on Investment
(ROI)
The difference between the benefit
achieved and the cost to achieve that
benefit, expressed as a percentage.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Review Apps
Allow code to be committed and
launched in real-time – environments
are spun up to allow developers to
review their application.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Rework
The time and effort required to correct
defects (waste).
DevOps Leader
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 61
Risk
A possible event that could cause harm
or loss or affect an organization's
ability to achieve its objectives. The
management of risk consists of three
activities: identifying risks, analyzing
risks, and managing risks. The
probable frequency and probable
magnitude of future loss. Pertains to a
possible event that could cause harm
or loss or affect an organization's
ability to execute or achieve its
objectives.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Risk Event
A possible event that could cause harm
or loss or affect an organization's
ability to achieve its objectives. The
management of risk consists of three
activities: identifying risks, analyzing
risks, and managing risks.
DevOps Leader
Risk Management
Process
The process by which "risk" is
contextualized, assessed and treated.
From ISO 31000: 1) Establish context, 2)
Assess risk, 3) Treat risk (remediate,
reduce or accept).
DevSecOps Foundation
Robot Framework
TDD framework created and supported
by Google.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Role
Set of responsibilities, activities, and
authorities granted to a person or
team. A role is defined by a process.
One person or team may have multiple
roles. A set of permissions assigned to
a user or group of users to allow a user
to perform actions within a system or
application.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation,
Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 62
Role-based Access
Control (RBAC)
An approach to restricting system
access to authorized users.
DevSecOps Foundation
Roll-back
Software changes which have been
integrated are removed from the
integration.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Root Cause Analysis
(RCA)
Actions take to identify the underlying
cause of a problem or incident.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
Rugged Development
(DevOps)
Rugged Development (DevOps) is a
method that includes security practices
as early in the continuous delivery
pipeline as possible to increase
cybersecurity, speed, and quality of
releases beyond what DevOps practices
can yield alone.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
Rugged DevOps
Rugged DevOps is a method that
includes security practices as early in
the continuous delivery pipeline as
possible to increase cybersecurity,
speed, and quality of releases beyond
what DevOps practices can yield alone.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Runbooks
A collection of procedures necessary
for the smooth operation of a service.
Previously manual in nature they are
now usually automated with tools like
Ansible.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Runtime Application
Self Protection (RASP)
Tools that actively monitor and block
threats in the production environment
before they can exploit vulnerabilities.
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering
Sanity Test
A very basic set of tests that determine
if a software is functional at all.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 63
Scalability
Scalability is a characteristic of a service
that describes its capability to cope and
perform under an increased or
expanding load.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Scaled Agile Framework
(SAFE)
A proven, publicly available, framework
for applying Lean-Agile principles and
practices at an enterprise scale.
DevOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
SCARF Model
A summary of important discoveries
from neuroscience about the way
people interact socially.
DevOps Leader
Scheduling
Scheduling: the process of planning to
release changes into production.
DevOps Leader
Scrum
A simple framework for effective team
collaboration on complex
projects. Scrum provides a small set of
rules that create "just enough"
structure for teams to be able to focus
their innovation on solving what might
otherwise be an insurmountable
challenge. (Scrum.org)
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Scrum Pillars
Pillars that uphold the Scrum
framework include Transparency,
Inspection, and Adaption.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, Value Stream
Management Foundation
Scrum Team
A self-organizing, cross-functional team
that uses the Scrum framework to
deliver products iteratively and
incrementally. The Scrum Team
consists of a Product Owner,
Developers, and a Scrum Master.
DevOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Scrum Values
A set of fundamental values and
qualities underpinning the Scrum
framework: commitment, focus,
openness, respect and courage.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 64
Scrum Master
An individual who provides process
leadership for Scrum (i.e., ensures
Scrum practices are understood and
followed) and who supports the Scrum
Team by removing impediments.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation
Secret Detection
Secret Detection aims to prevent that
sensitive information, like passwords,
authentication tokens, and private keys
are unintentionally leaked as part of
the repository content.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Secrets Management
Secrets management refers to the tools
and methods for managing digital
authentication credentials (secrets),
including passwords, keys, APIs, and
tokens for use in applications, services,
privileged accounts, and other sensitive
parts of the IT ecosystem.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevSecOps
Foundation
Secure Automation
Secure automation removes the chance
of human error (and wilful sabotage)
by securing the tooling used across the
delivery pipeline.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Security (Information
Security)
Practices intended to protect the
confidentiality, integrity, and availability
of computer system data from those
with malicious intentions.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
Security as Code
Automating and building security into
DevOps tools and practices, making it
an essential part of toolchains and
workflows.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Security tests
The purpose of the test is to determine
if an EUT meets its security
requirements. An example is a test that
determines if an EUT processes login
credentials properly.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 65
Selenium
Popular open-source tool for software
testing GUI and web applications.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Self-healing
Self-healing means the ability of
services and underlying environments
to detect and resolve problems
automatically. It eliminates the need
for manual human intervention.
, DevOps Engineering
Foundation
Serverless
A code execution paradigm where no
underlying infrastructure or
dependencies are needed, moreover, a
piece of code is executed by a service
provider (typically cloud) who takes
over the creation of the execution
environment. Lambda functions in AWS
and Azure Functions are examples.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Service
Enables the ability to do something
when and how it is needed or desired.
It enables its customers to achieve their
objectives more efficiently and/or more
effectively than they could without the
service.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Service Desk
Single point of contact between the
service provider and the users. Tools
like Service Now are used for managing
the lifecycle of services as well as
internal and external stakeholder
engagement.
DevOps Foundation
Service Level
Agreement (SLA)
Written agreement between an IT
service provider and its customer(s)
that defines key service targets and
responsibilities of both parties. An SLA
may cover multiple services or
customers. (ITIL definition)
DevOps Engineering
Foundation, Site
Reliability Engineering
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 66
Service Level Indicator
(SLI)
SLI's are used to communicate
quantitative data about services,
typically to measure how the service is
performing against an SLO.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Service Level Objective
(SLO)
An SLO is a goal for how well a product
or service should operate. SLO's are set
based on what an organization is
expecting from a service.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Seven Pillars of DevOps
Seven distinct "pillars" provide a
foundation for DevOps systems which
include Collaborative Culture, Design
for DevOps, Continuous Integration,
Continuous Testing, Continuous
Delivery and Deployment, Continuous
Monitoring, and Elastic Infrastructure
and Tools.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation
Shift Left
An approach that strives to build
quality into the software development
process by incorporating testing early
and often. This notion extends to
security architecture, hardening
images, application security testing,
and beyond.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
SilkTest
Automated function and regression
testing of enterprise applications.
Licensed by Borland.
Continuous Testing
Foundation, , DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Simian Army
The Simian Army is a suite of failure-
inducing tools designed by Netflix. The
most famous example is Chaos Monkey
which randomly terminates services in
production as part of a Chaos
Engineering approach.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Single Point of Failure
(SPOF)
A single point of failure (SPOF) is a part
of a system that, if it fails, will stop the
entire system from working.
DevOps Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 67
Site Reliability
Engineering (SRE)
The discipline that incorporates aspects
of software engineering and applies
them to infrastructure and operations
problems. The main goals are to create
scalable and highly reliable software
systems.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Smoke Test
A basic set of functional tests that are
run immediately after a software
component is built. Same as CI
Regression Test.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Snapshot
Report of pass/fail results for a specific
build.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Snippets
Stored and shared code snippets to
allow collaboration around specific
pieces of code. Also allows code
snippets to be used in other code-
bases. BitBucket and GitLab allow this.
Site Reliability
Engineering
SOAP
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is
an XML-based messaging protocol for
exchanging information among
computers.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Software Composition
Analysis
A tool that checks for libraries or
functions in source code that have
known vulnerabilities.
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Software Defined
Networking (SDN)
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is
a network architecture approach that
enables the network to be intelligently
and centrally controlled, or
'programmed,' using software
applications.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 68
Software Delivery
Lifecycle (SDLC)
The process used to design, develop
and test high quality software.
DevOps Leader, Site
Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Software Version
Management System
A repository tool which is used to
manage software changes. Examples
are: Azure DevOps, BitBucket, Git,
GitHub, GitLab, VSTS.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Software-as-a-Service
(SaaS)
Category of cloud computing services
in which software is licensed on a
subscription basis.
DevOps Foundation,
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Source Code Tools
Repositories for controlling source
code for key assets (application and
infrastructure) as a single source of
truth.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Spotify Squad Model
An organizational model that helps
teams in large organizations behave
like startups and be nimble.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader
Sprint
A period of 2-4 weeks during which an
increment of product work is
completed.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Sprint (Scrum)
A time-boxed iteration of work during
which an increment of product
functionality is implemented.
DevOps Foundation
Sprint Backlog
Subset of the backlog that represents
the work that must be completed to
realize the Sprint Goal.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 69
Sprint Goal
The purpose and objective of a Sprint,
often expressed as a business problem
that is going to be solved.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Sprint Planning
A 4 to 8-hour time-boxed event that
defines the Sprint Goal, the increment
of the Product Backlog that will be
completed during the Sprint, and how
it will be completed.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Sprint Retrospective
A 1.5 to 3-hour time-boxed event
during which the Team reviews the last
Sprint and identifies and prioritizes
improvements for the next Sprint.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Sprint Review
A time-boxed event of 4 hours or less
where the Team and stakeholders
inspect the work resulting from the
Sprint and update the Product Backlog.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Spyware
Software that is installed in a computer
without the user's knowledge and
transmits information about the user's
computer activities over back to the
threat agent.
DevSecOps Foundation
Squads
A cross-functional, co-located,
autonomous, self-directed team.
DevOps Leader
Stakeholder
Person who has an interest in an
organization, project or IT service.
Stakeholders may include customers,
users and suppliers. (ITIL definition).
DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 70
Stability
The sensitivity a service has to accept
changes and the negative impact that
may be caused by system changes.
Services may have reliability, in that if
functions over a long period of time,
but may not be easy to change and so
does not have stability.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Standard Change
Pre-approved, low risk change that
follows a procedure or work
instruction. (ITIL definition)
DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation
Static Application
Security Testing (SAST)
A type of testing that checks source
code for bugs and weaknesses.
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Static Code Analysis
The purpose of the test is to detect
source code logic errors and omissions
such as memory leaks, unutilized
variables, unutilized pointers.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Status Page
Service pages that easily communicate
the status of services to customers and
users.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Sticks
Negative incentives, for discouraging or
punishing undesired behaviors.
DevSecOps Foundation
Storage Security
A specialty area of security that is
concerned with securing data storage
systems and ecosystems and the data
that resides on these systems.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Stormstack
A commercial orchestration tool based
on event triggers instead of time-
based.
Continuous Testing
Foundation
StoStaKee
This stands for stop, start, and keep;
this is an interactive time-boxed
exercise focused on past events.
DevOps Leader
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 71
Strategic Sprint
A <4 week timeboxed Sprint during
which strategic elements that were
defined during Practice Planning are
completed so that the Team can move
on to designing the activities of the
process.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Stream-Aligned Team
A team aligned to a single, valuable
stream of work; this might be a single
product or service, a single user story,
or a single user persona.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
Structural Changes
Changes in the hierarchy of authority,
goals, structural characteristics,
administrative procedures, and
management systems.
DevOps Leader
Supplier
External (third party) supplier,
manufacturer, or vendor responsible
for supplying goods or services that are
required to deliver IT services.
DevOps Foundation
Synthetic Monitoring
Synthetic monitoring (also known as
active monitoring, or semantic
monitoring) runs a subset of an
application's automated tests against
the system on a regular basis. The
results are pushed into the monitoring
service, which triggers alerts in case of
failures.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
System of Record
A system of record is the authoritative
data source for a data element or data
entity.
DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation
System Test
The purpose of the test is to determine
if a complete system performs as
expected in its intended configurations.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 72
System Under Test
(SUT)
The EUT is an entire system. E.g. Bank
teller machine is being tested.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Tag-Based Test
Selection Method
Tests and Code modules are pre-
assigned tags. Tests are selected for a
build matching pre-assigned tags.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Target Operating
Model
A description of the desired state of
the operating model of an
organization.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Teal Organization
An emerging organizational paradigm
that advocates a level of consciousness
including all previous world views
within the operations of an
organization.
DevOps Leader
Team Dynamics
A measurement of how a team works
together. Includes team culture,
communication styles, decision-making
ability, trust between members, and
the willingness of the team to change.
DevOps Leader
Team Topologies
An approach to organizing business
and technology teams for fast flow,
providing a practical, step-by-step,
adaptive model for organizational
design and team interaction.
Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Techno-Economic
Paradigm Shifts
Techno-economic paradigm shifts are
at the core of the general, innovation-
based theory of economic and societal
development as conceived by Carlota
Perez.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 73
Telemetry
Telemetry is the collection of
measurements or other data at remote
or inaccessible points and their
automatic transmission to receiving
equipment for monitoring.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Architect
Person who has responsibility for
defining the overall end-to-end test
strategy for an EUT.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Test Artifact Repository
Database of files used for testing.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Test Campaign
A test campaign may include one or
more test sessions.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Case
Set of test steps together with data and
configuration information. A test case
has a specific purpose to test at least
one attribute of the EUT.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Creation Methods
This is a class of test terms that refers
to the methodology used to create test
cases.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 74
Test-Driven
Development (TDD)
Test-driven development (TDD) is a
software development process in which
the developer writes a test before
composing code. They then follow this
process:
1. Write the test
2. Run the test and any others that are
relevant and see them fail
3. Write the code
4. Run test(s)
5. Refactor code if needed
6. Repeat
Unit level tests and/or application tests
are created ahead of the code that is to
be tested.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Duration
The time it takes to run a test. E.g. #
hours per test
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Test Environment
The test environment refers to the
operating system (e.g. Linus, windows
version, etc.), the configuration of
software (e.g. parameter options),
dynamic conditions (e.g. CPU and
memory utilization), and physical
environment (e.g. power, cooling) in
which the tests are performed.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Fast
A CT tenet referring to accelerated
testing.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Framework
A set of processes, procedures, abstract
concepts, and environments in which
automated tests are designed and
implemented.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 75
Test Harness
A tool which enables the automation of
tests. It refers to the system test drivers
and other supporting tools that
requires to execute tests. It provides
stubs and drivers which are small
programs that interact with the
software under test.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Hierarchy
This is a class of terms describes the
organization of tests into groups.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Methodology
This class of terms identifies the
general methodology used by a test.
Examples are White Box, Black Box
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test result repository
Database of test results.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Test Results Trend-
based
A matrix of correlation factors
correlates test cases and code modules
according to test results (verdict).
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Roles
This class of terms identifies general
roles and responsibilities for people
relevant to testing.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Script
Automated test case. A single test
script may be implemented with one or
more test cases depending on the data.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 76
Test Selection Method
This class of terms refers to the method
used to select tests to be executed on a
version of an EUT.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Session
Set of one or more test suites that are
run together on a single build at a
specific time.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Suite
Set of test cases that are run together
on a single build at a specific time.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Trend
History of verdicts.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Type
The class which indicates the purpose
of the test.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Test Version
The version of files used to test a
specific build.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Tester
An individual who has the responsibility
to test a system or service.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 77
Testing Tools
Tools that verify code quality before
passing the build.
DevOps Leader, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
The Advice Process
Any person deciding must seek advice
from everyone meaningfully affected
by the decision and people with
expertise in the matter. Advice received
must be taken into consideration,
though it does not have to be accepted
or followed. The objective of the advice
process is not to form a consensus, but
to inform the decision-maker so that
they can make the best decision
possible. Failure to follow the advice
process undermines trust and
unnecessarily introduces risk to the
business.
DevSecOps Foundation
The Checkbox Trap
The situation wherein an audit-centric
perspective focuses exclusively on
"checking the box" on compliance
requirements without consideration for
overall security objectives.
DevSecOps Foundation
The Power of TED
The Power of TED* offers an alternative
to the Karpman Drama Triangle with its
roles of Victim, Persecutor, and
Rescuer. The Empowerment
Dynamic (TED) provides the antidote
roles of Creator, Challenger, and Coach
and a more positive approach to life's
challenges.
DevOps Leader
The Sprint
A period of <4 weeks during which an
increment of work is completed.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, Value Stream
Management Foundation
The Three Pillars of
Empiricism
Three pillars uphold every
implementation of empirical process
control: transparency, inspection, and
adaptation.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 78
The Three Ways
Key principles of DevOps – Flow,
Feedback, Continuous experimentation,
and learning.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Theory of Constraints
Methodology for identifying the most
important limiting factor (i.e.,
constraint) that stands in the way of
achieving a goal and then
systematically improving that
constraint until it is no longer the
limiting factor.
DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Thomas Kilmann
Inventory (TKI)
Measures a person's behavioral
choices under certain conflict
situations.
DevOps Foundation
Threat Agent
An actor, human or automated, that
acts against a system with intent to
harm or compromise that system.
Sometimes also called a "Threat Actor."
DevSecOps Foundation
Threat Detection
Refers to the ability to detect, report,
and support the ability to respond to
attacks. Intrusion detection systems
and denial-of-service systems allow for
some level of threat detection and
prevention.
DevSecOps Foundation
Threat Intelligence
Information pertaining to the nature of
a threat or the actions a threat may be
known to be perpetrating. May also
include "indicators of compromise"
related to a given threat's actions, as
well as a "course of action" describing
how to remediate the given threat
action.
DevSecOps Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 79
Threat Modeling
A method that ranks and models
potential threats so that the risk can be
understood and mitigated in the
context of the value of the
application(s) to which they pertain.
DevSecOps Foundation
Time to Insight
Actioned
The time between having an idea,
delivering it to the customer, learning
and actioning the insight from that
learning.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
Time to Learning
The time between conceiving an idea
and learning how it was received based
on customer feedback.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
Time to Market
The period of time between when an
idea is conceived and when it is
available to customers.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Time to Value
The measure of the time it takes for the
business to realize value from a feature
or service.
DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Time Tracking
Tools that allow for time to be tracked,
either against individual issues or other
work or project types.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Timebox
The maximum duration of a Scrum
event.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
Toil
A kind of work tied to running a
production service that tends to be
manual, repetitive, automatable,
tactical, devoid of enduring value.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Tool
This class describes tools that
orchestrate, automate, simulate and
monitor EUT's and infrastructures.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 80
Toolchain
A philosophy that involves using an
integrated set of complimentary task-
specific tools to automate an end-to-
end process (vs. a single-vendor
solution).
DevOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Touch Time
In a Lean Production system, the touch
time is the time that the product is
actually being worked on, and value is
being added.
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Tracing
Tracing provides insight into the
performance and health of a deployed
application, tracking each function or
microservice which handles a given
request.
Site Reliability
Engineering, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Traffic Volume
The amount of data sent and received
by visitors to a service (e.g. a website or
API).
Site Reliability
Engineering
Training From the Back
of the Room
An accelerated learning model in line
with agile values and principles using
the 4Cs instructional design “map”
(Connection, Concept, Concrete
Practice, Conclusion).
DevOps Leader
Transformational
Leadership
A leadership model in which leaders
inspire and motivate followers to
achieve higher performance by
appealing to their values and sense of
purpose, facilitating wide-scale
organizational change (State of DevOps
Report, 2017).
DevOps Leader
Tribe Lead
A senior technical leader that has broad
and deep technical expertise across all
the squads' technical areas. A group of
squads working together on a common
feature set, product, or service is a tribe
in Spotify's definitions.
DevOps Leader
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 81
Tribes
A collection of squads with a long-term
mission that work on/in a related
business capability.
DevOps Leader
Trojan (horses)
Malware that carries out malicious
operations under the appearance of a
desired operation such as playing an
online game. A Trojan horse differs
from a virus because the Trojan binds
itself to non-executable files, such as
image files, audio files whereas a virus
requires an executable file to operate.
DevSecOps Foundation
Trunk
The primary source code integration
repository for a software product.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Unit Test
The purpose of the test is to verify code
logic.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Usability Test
The purpose of the test is to determine
if humans have a satisfactory
experience when using an EUT.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
User
Consumer of IT services. Or, the
identity asserted during authentication
(aka username).
DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation
User and Entity
Behavior Analytics
(UEBA)
A machine learning technique to
analyze normal and “abnormal” user
behavior with the aim of preventing the
latter.
Site Reliability
Engineering
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 82
User Story
A brief statement used to describe a
requirement from a user’s perspective.
User stories are used to facilitate
communication, planning, and
negotiation activities between the
stakeholders and the Agile Service
Management Team.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Value Added Time
The amount of time spent on an activity
that creates value (e.g., development,
testing).
DevOps Leader
Value Cycle
The lifecycle stages of the value stream
from ideation to value realization.
Value Stream
Management Foundation
Value Efficiency
Being able to produce value with the
minimum amount of time and
resources.
DevOps Leader
Value Stream
All of the activities needed to go from a
customer request to a delivered
product or service.
DevOps Foundation,
Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Value Stream Map
Visually depicts the end-to-end flow of
activities from the initial request to
value creation for the customer.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Value Stream Mapping
A lean tool that depicts the flow of
information, materials, and work across
functional silos with an emphasis on
quantifying waste, including time and
quality.
DevOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 83
Value Stream
Management
Value Stream Management is a
combination of people, processes, and
technology that maps, optimizes,
visualizes, measures, and governs
business value flow through
heterogeneous software delivery
pipelines from idea through
development and into production.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, Site Reliability
Engineering, Value
Stream Management
Foundation DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Value Stream
Management Platform
Software that manages value streams.
Value Stream
Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Variable Speed IT
An approach where traditional and
digital processes co-exist within an
organization while moving at their own
speed.
DevOps Foundation
Velocity
The measure of the quantity of work
done in a pre-defined interval. The
amount of work an individual or team
can complete in a given amount of
time.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation, Site
Reliability Engineering
Verdict
Test result classified as Fail, Pass, or
Inconclusive.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Version control tools
Ensure a 'single source of truth' and
enable change control and tracking for
all production artifacts.
DevOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Vertical Scaling
Computing resources are scaled higher
to increase processing speed e.g. using
faster computers to run more tasks
faster.
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 84
Virus (Computer)
Malicious executable code attached to
a file that spreads when an infected file
is passed from system to system that
could be harmless (but annoying) or it
could modify or delete data.
DevSecOps Foundation
Voice of the Customer
(VOC)
A process that captures and analyzes
customer requirements and feedback
to understand what the customer
wants.
DevOps Foundation
Vulnerability
A weakness in a design, system, or
application that can be exploited by an
attacker.
DevSecOps
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Vulnerability
Intelligence
Information describing a known
vulnerability, including affected
software by version, the relative
severity of the vulnerability (for
example, does it result in an escalation
of privileges for a user role, or does it
cause a denial of service), the
exploitability of the vulnerability (how
easy/hard it is to exploit), and
sometimes current rate of exploitation
in the wild (is it being actively exploited
or is it just theoretical). This
information will also often include
guidance on what software versions
are known to have remediated the
described vulnerability.
DevSecOps Foundation
Vulnerability
management
The process of identifying and
remediating vulnerabilities.
DevSecOps Foundation
Wait Time
The amount of time wasted on waiting
for work (e.g., waiting for development
and test infrastructure, waiting for
resources, waiting for management
approval).
DevOps Leader, Value
Stream Management
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 85
Waste (Lean
Manufacturing)
Any activity that does not add value to
a process, product or service.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, DevOps
Leader, Value Stream
Management Foundation
Water-scrum-fall
A hybrid approach to application
lifecycle management that combines
waterfall and Scrum development can
complete in a given amount of time.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation
Waterfall (Project
Management)
A linear and sequential approach to
managing software design and
development projects in which
progress is seen as flowing steadily
(and sequentially) downwards (like a
waterfall).
Certified Agile Service
Manager, Continuous
Delivery Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Foundation
Weakness
An error in software that can be
exploited by an attacker to compromise
the application, system, or the data
contained therein. Also called a
vulnerability.
DevSecOps Foundation
Web Application
Firewall (WAF)
Tools that examine traffic being sent to
an application and can block anything
that looks malicious.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Web IDE
Tools that have a web client integrated
development environment. Enables
developer productivity without having
to use a local development tool.
Site Reliability
Engineering
Westrum (Organization
Types)
Ron Westrum developed a typology of
organizational cultures that includes
three types of organizations:
Pathological (power-oriented),
Bureaucratic (rule-oriented) and
Generative (performance-oriented).
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability
Engineering
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 86
White-Box Testing
(or Clear-, Glass-,
Transparent-Box
Testing or Structural
Testing)
Test cases use extensive knowledge of
the internal design structure or
workings of an application, as opposed
to its functionality (i.e. Black-Box
Testing).
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Whitelisting
Application whitelisting is the practice
of specifying an index of approved
software applications that are
permitted to be present and active on a
computer system.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem
Foundation, DevOps
Engineering Foundation
Wicked Questions
Wicked questions are used to expose
the assumptions which shape our
actions and choices. They
are questions that articulate the
embedded, and often contradictory
assumptions, we hold about an issue, a
problem or a context.
DevOps Leader
Wiki
Knowledge sharing can be enabled by
using tools like Confluence which
create a rich Wiki of content
Site Reliability
Engineering
Wilber's Quadrants
A model that recognises four modes of
general approach for human beings.
Two axes are used: on one axis people
tend towards individuality OR
collectivity.
DevOps Leader
Work in Progress (WIP)
Any work that has been started but has
not been completed.
DevOps
Foundation, Value
Stream Management
Foundation
Workaround
A temporary way to reduce or eliminate
the impact of incidents or problems.
May be logged as a known error in the
Known Error Database. (ITIL definition).
DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
Foundation
DevOps Glossary of Terms
© DevOps Institute DevOps Glossary of Terms 87
World Café
Is a structured conversational process
for knowledge sharing in which groups
of people discuss a topic at several
tables, with individuals switching tables
periodically and getting introduced to
the previous discussion at their new
table by a "table host".
DevOps Leader
Worms (Computer)
Worms replicate themselves on a
system by attaching themselves to
different files and looking for pathways
between computers. They usually slow
down networks and can run by
themselves (where viruses need a host
program to run).
DevSecOps Foundation
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
Videos Featured in the Course
Module
Title & Description
Link
Module 1
SRE Anti-patterns
Persistent SRE Antipatterns with
Blake Bisset and Jonah Horowitz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7
Y06GIHlZl8
Module 2
SLI/SLOs Deep Dive with
David Blank Edelman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d
plGoewF4DA
Module 3
Building Secure & Reliable Systems
with Heather Adkins
https://youtu.be/0LlBmPW3F1c?t=69
0
Module 4
Full Stack Observability
Open Telemetry with
Constance Caramanolis
https://youtu.be/S0-t-Mgbhsc?t=119
Module 4
Loki: An OpenSource Zipkin /
Prometheus Mashup with Tom Wilkie
https://youtu.be/Bmzx-5uExPM?t=35
6
Module 5
Using Platform Engineering & AIOps
AI in Ops with Stylianos Kampakis
https://youtu.be/GSS_rTXkpFU?t=20
3
https://youtu.be/GSS_rTXkpFU?t=155
Module 6
Incident Management (class SRE
implements DevOps) with Liz and Seth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n
4y9dwinPBQ
Module 6
Runbook Automation : The Next Great
Unlock for DevOps and SRE with
Damon Edwards
https://youtu.be/uyJ-FJXD5co?t=140
Module 7
Chaos Engineering
Practical Chaos Engineering
Adrian Hornsby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=7
33&v=w_Y6C0QgmL0&feature=youtu.
be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
w_Y6C0QgmL0&t=733s
Module 8
How to Grow Your SRE Practice with
Jason Yee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K
QIUySjdGts
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 VAR 1
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
Case Studies Featured in the Course
Module
Title & Description
Link
Module 1
SRE Anti-patterns
Defense in Depth works for Reliability –
Monzo Bank
https://youtu.be/OUYTNywPk-s?t=14
8
Module 2
SLO is the Proxy for Customer
Happiness - Kudos Engineering
https://youtu.be/KmVDkBmnb4U?t=6
3
Module 2
SLO is the Proxy for Customer
Happiness Home Depot
https://sre.google/workbook/slo-engi
neering-case-studies/
Module 3
Building Secure and Reliable Systems
Google Chrome Security Team
https://youtu.be/fNyT7HNKQfk?t=332
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/vi
ew/building-secure-and/97814920831
15/ch19.html#onenine_case_study_ch
rome_security_team
Module 4
Full Stack Observability
Planet Case Study
Namely Case Study
https://youtu.be/5aNeNhKNlUM?t=12
83
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H
EKv9db3lpg
Module 5
Using Platform Engineering & AIOps
How FedEx uses AIOps to improve
Operational Eciencies’
https://opusresearch.net/wordpress/
2017/10/02/case-study-how-fedex-is-l
everaging-intelligent-assistants-ai-an
d-natural-language-understanding/
https://opusresearch.net/wordpress/
pdfs/FedEx_IAConf_SF_2017.pdf
Module 5
Using Platform Engineering & AIOps
How 3M Modernized IT Event
Management and Alerting
Using AIOPs
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/form
/how-3m-modernized-it-event-mana
gement-and-alerting-with-splunk.ht
ml
Module 6
SRE & Incident Response Management
HCL helps its customers better
manage and monitor their modern IT
environments
https://www.moogsoft.com/resource
s/aiops/case-study/moogsoft-hcl-tec
hnologies-case-study/
Module 8
SREis the Purest Form of DevOps
AirBnB’s adoption of practical SRE
https://youtu.be/T01ge8byOoU?t=25
References to Articles
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 VAR 2
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
Module
Title & Description
Link
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Pitfalls on the Road to
Creating a Successful
SRE Program Like
Netflix and Google
https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa17/c
onference-program/presentation/bisset
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Alerting on SLOs
https://sre.google/workbook/alerting-on-sl
os/
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Architectures for open
and scalable clouds
http://www.slideshare.net/randybias/archit
ectures-for-open-and-scalable-clouds
1. SRE Anti-patterns
SRE- It’s not about
numbers- it’s about
customer satisfaction
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/co
nsulting/articles/sre-its-not-about-number
s-its-about-customer-satisfaction-architec
ting-the-cloud-podcast-devops-cloud-usab
ility-engineering.html
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Measuring and
Evaluating Service Level
Objectives (SLOs)
https://medium.com/@serhatcan/measurin
g-and-evaluating-service-level-objectives-s
los-84b0dc740a0a
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Google Explains Why
Others Are Doing SRE
Wrong
https://www.infoq.com/news/2018/07/goog
le-explains-sre/
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Pets, Cattle, Chickens,
and Snowflakes
https://subscription.packtpub.com/book/vi
rtualization_and_cloud/9781785882753/1/ch
01lvl1sec08/pets-cattle-chickens-and-snow
flakes
1. SRE Anti-patterns
TechBiz Do you know
what SRE is and what it
can do for your business?
https://en.paradigmadigital.com/techbiz/d
o-you-know-what-sre-is-and-what-it-can-d
o-for-your-business/
1. SRE Anti-patterns
SRE Anti-Pattern: “The
Dogpile”
https://www.rundeck.com/blog/sre-anti-pa
ttern-the-dogpile
1. SRE Anti-patterns
How to "SRE" a Travel
Emergency
https://www.sidewalksafari.com/2018/12/sr
e-in-a-travel-emergency.html
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Site Reliability
Engineering; that’s
music to my ears!
SRE@bol.com
https://techlab.bol.com/site-reliability-engi
neering-thats-music-to-my-ears/
1. SRE Anti-patterns
97 Things Every SRE
Should Know
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/97
-things-every/9781492081487/
1. SRE Anti-patterns
SRE Anti-Pattern: “Do it.
Do it again. Then do it
again.”
https://www.rundeck.com/blog/sre-anti-pa
ttern-do-it-then-do-it-again
1. SRE Anti-patterns
4 DevOps Anti-patterns
That Lead to Disaster
https://techbeacon.com/devops/4-devops-
anti-patterns-lead-disaster
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 VAR 3
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Incident Management
(class SRE implements
DevOps)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4y9d
winPBQ
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Postmortem Culture:
Learning from Failure
https://sre.google/sre-book/postmortem-c
ulture/
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Postmortem Culture:
Learning from Failure
https://sre.google/workbook/postmortem-
culture/
1. SRE Anti-patterns
The Blameless
Postmortem
https://postmortems.pagerduty.com/cultur
e/blameless/#:~:text=The%20goal%20of%
20the%20postmortem,instead%20of%20w
ho%20made%20it.
1. SRE Anti-patterns
What are Blameless
Postmortems?
https://www.blameless.com/sre/what-are-
blameless-postmortems-do-they-work-how
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Service Health Status
http://status.oce.com
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
SLO Adoption at Twitter
https://www.blameless.com/blog/slo-adopt
ion-at-twitter
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
EXERCISE
Cloud SLA Examples
AWS Summary of SLAs
SLAs for Microsoft Azure
Google Cloud Platform SLAs
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
I want all the 9s….. in my
SLO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhJbbr
Ky1pw&t=2268s
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
The Home Depot Case
Story VALET
https://sre.google/workbook/slo-engineeri
ng-case-studies/
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
Error Budgets Practical
Implementation
https://www.slideshare.net/yaroslavmoloch
ko/implementing-error-budgets-125400822
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
ERROR BUDGET
Practical application
when 3rd party software
is involved
https://youtu.be/uBbE8HTXbaw?t=882
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
Managing Reliability with
Service Level Objectives
and Error Budgets by
Tim Little
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmVDk
Bmnb4U
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
What is Sharing?
https://www.techtarget.com/searchoracle/
definition/sharding#:~:text=Types%20of%
20sharding%20architectures,-The%20follo
wing%20are%20the%20key
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
An Overview of Sharding
https://hazelcast.com/glossary/sharding/
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 VAR 4
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
Latency and Availability
Error Budgets Done
Right at Scale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBbE8
HTXbaw
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
If You’re Building
Microservices, You Need
to Understand What a
Bounded Context is
https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/if-
youre-building-microservices-you-need-to-
understand-what-a-bounded-context-is-30
cbe51d5085
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
Setting SLOs and SLIs in
the Real World
https://youtu.be/3Aem8DAGyAk?t=155
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
SLIs SLOs and SLAs
https://youtu.be/LKpIirL8f-I?t=410
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Non-Abstract
Large-Scale Design
NALSD
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1j
W2S9yYZf5DYmri0KlOu1DFSZMTeOswl6ce5
V9xMIOQ/edit?resourcekey=0-
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Non-Abstract
Large-Scale Design
NALSD Approach
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/th
e-site-reliability/9781492029496/ch12.html
#what_is_nalsdquestion_mark
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Introducing
Non-Abstract Large
System Design
https://sre.google/workbook/non-abstract-
design/
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
SRE Classroom:
Distributed ImageServer
https://sre.google/classroom/imageser
ver
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
SRE Classroom: Design a
Distributed System in
One Hour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOXkg
MuVuYY
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
The intersection of
Security and Reliability
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/bui
lding-secure-and/9781492083115/ch01.html
#reliability_versus_security_design_cons
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
SRE Engagement Model
https://sre.google/workbook/engagement-
model/
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
How do you design for a
changing landscape?
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/bui
lding-secure-and/9781492083115/ch07.html
#design_for_a_changing_landscape
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Building successful SRE
in large enterprises
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/veloci
ty-conference/9781492025870/video323188.
html
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Agile Architecture in
SAFe
https://www.scaledagileframework.com/ag
ile-architecture/
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 VAR 5
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
SAFe and Enterprise
Architecture explained in
5 points
https://www.architectureandgovernance.c
om/app-tech/safe-and-enterprise-architect
ure-explained-in-5-points/
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Software Architecture
and Agile. Are they both
really compatible?
https://medium.com/quick-code/software-
architecture-and-agile-are-they-both-really
-compatible-c1eef0afcbb1
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Data Privacy and
Security
https://www.varonis.com/blog/data-privacy
/
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Why it’s Time for Site
Reliability Engineering to
Shift Left
https://devops.com/why-its-time-for-site-r
eliability-engineering-to-shift-left
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
"Building Reliable
Systems Masterclass"
course
http://www.russmiles.com/building-reliable
-systems.html
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Clarifying Containers,
Microservices, and
Kubernetes
https://devopsinstitute.com/clarifying-cont
ainers-microservices-and-kubernetes-with
-tracy-ragan-of-deployhub-e10/
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Cloud Operations and
Analytics
https://www.slideshare.net/JorgeCardoso4
/cloud-operations-and-analytics-improving
-distributed-systems-reliability-using-fault-
injection
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Kubernetes Up &
Running
https://clouddamcdnprodep.azureedge.net
/gdc/gdckTlBtc/original
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Microsoft CISO
Workshop
https://slideplayer.com/slide/17542728/
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Rapid 7 Fundamentals
https://www.rapid7.com/fundamentals/
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Forbes- A CxO’s Guide to
Container Monitoring
https://www.forbes.com/sites/splunk/2022
/03/01/a-cxos-guide-to-container-monitori
ng/?sh=50ce44725f32
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Gartner Research: Best
Practices for Running
Containers and
Kubernetes in
Production
https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3
988395
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Kubernetes Custom
Resources
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/exten
d-kubernetes/api-extension/custom-resour
ces/
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
The Reactive Manifesto
https://www.reactivemanifesto.org/glossar
y#Location-Transparency
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Genesys Upgrade
Strategies
https://all.docs.genesys.com/PrivateEditio
n/Current/PEGuide/UpgradStrats
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 VAR 6
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
OpenShift Using
Deployment Strategies
https://docs.openshift.com/container-platf
orm/4.6/applications/deployments/deploym
ent-strategies.html
3. Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
Mitre ATT&CK
https://attack.mitre.org/
4. Full Stack
Observability
A Collection of Best
Practices for Production
Services
https://sre.google/sre-book/service-best-p
ractices/
4. Full Stack
Observability
Differences Between
Synthetic Monitoring and
Real User Monitoring
https://stackify.com/rum-vs-synthetic-mon
itoring/
4. Full Stack
Observability
Why does speed matter?
https://web.dev/why-speed-matters/#:~:te
xt=For%20Mobify%2C%20every%20100ms
%20decrease,revenue%20increase%20of%
20nearly%20%24380%2C000.
4. Full Stack
Observability
SKILup Days:
Obervability
https://www.devopsinstitute.com/wp-cont
ent/uploads/2021/01/2020-Observ-Shivaga
mi-Gugan.pdf
4. Full Stack
Observability
Good article on
Observability and
Monitoring
https://youtu.be/pY44UX8j4Pc?t=26
4. Full Stack
Observability
Stackify- What is real
user monitoring?
https://stackify.com/what-is-real-user-mo
nitoring/
4. Full Stack
Observability
Observability at Google
https://learning.oreilly.com/videos/observa
bility-at-google/0636920424239/06369204
24239-video329911
4. Full Stack
Observability
OpenTelemetry and
observability at Shopify,
Splunk, and Google
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_L0oh
uF0
4. Full Stack
Observability
Distributed Tracing with
Zipkin and ELK
https://logz.io/blog/zipkin-elk/
4. Full Stack
Observability
Latency is Everywhere
and it Costs you Sales-
How to Crush It
http://highscalability.com/latency-everywh
ere-and-it-costs-you-sales-how-crush-it
4. Full Stack
Observability
Observability — A 3-Year
Retrospective
https://thenewstack.io/observability-a-3-y
ear-retrospective/
4. Full Stack
Observability
Monitoring and
Observability — What’s
the Difference and Why
Does It Matter?
https://thenewstack.io/monitoring-and-ob
servability-whats-the-difference-and-why-
does-it-matter/
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 VAR 7
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
4. Full Stack
Observability
Observability at Google
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/obser
vability-at-google/0636920424239/video32
9911.html
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
Building Self-Healing
with AIOps
https://www.dynatrace.com/news/blog/shi
ft-left-sre-building-self-healing-into-your-c
loud-delivery-pipeline/
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
Gartner Top 10 Trends
Impacting Infrastructure
& Operations for 2020
https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgart
ner/gartner-top-10-trends-impacting-infras
tructure-operations-for-2020
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
The Seven Steps to
Implement #DataOps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muhs8
zJnETM
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
Proactively Detect
Unusual Behavior
https://newrelic.com/lp/aiops?utm_campai
gn=AIOps-Emerging&utm_medium=cpc&ut
m_source=google&utm_content=AIO_LP&fi
scal_year=FY21&quarter=Q4&gtm=OPS&pro
gram=aiops&ad_type=None&geo=EMERGIN
G&utm_term=aiops&utm_device=c&_bt=50
4169602696&_bm=e&_bn=g&gclid=Cj0KCQj
w5PGFBhC2ARIsAIFIMNeggGr9EMZ_f9XTey
btxJldKxxZEFp1g4oMXpPyaOq5NUBHT5Fy
WFUaAn6uEALw_wcB
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
Gartner Market Guide for
AIOps Platforms, 2021
https://digitate.com/market-guide-for-aiop
s-platforms/?utm_source=google&utm_me
dium=search&utm_campaign=corporate-ai
ops&utm_content=aiops-gartner-Aiops
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
A successful digital
transformation requires
AIOps
https://sciencelogic.com/solutions/aiops
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
The Rise of Platform
Engineering
https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/202
0/02/13/setting-the-stage-for-platform-eng
ineering/
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
Top 5 things to know
about Platform
Engineering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htQfjkl
TNrM
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
What is AIOps?
https://medium.com/geekculture/aiops-6e
463cbe617a
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
MIT Technology Review:
Simplify the complex
with AIOps
https://www.appdynamics.com/resources/
whitepaper/mit-technology-review-simplify
-the-complex-with-aiops
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
How to Establish a High
Severity Incident
Management Program
https://www.gremlin.com/community/tutor
ials/how-to-establish-a-high-severity-incid
ent-management-program/
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 VAR 8
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
High Velocity IT
https://www.axelos.com/news/blogs/janua
ry-2020/itil-4-high-velocity-it-the-digital-e
nterprise
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Valuable Investments,
Fast Development,
Resilient Operations
https://www.itsmacademy.com/content/W
hat_is_ITIL_4_HVIT.pdf
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Using Incident Metrics to
Improve SRE at Scale
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/seeki
ng-sre/9781491978856/ch04.html
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
PagerDuty Incident
Response
https://response.pagerduty.com/training/s
ubject_matter_expert/
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Incident management
for high-velocity teams
https://www.atlassian.com/incident-manag
ement/kpis/common-metrics
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Recovery Point Objective
(RPO)
https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/re
covery-point-objective-RPO
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
DevOps vs. ITIL 4 vs.
SRE: Stop the
arguments
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/201
9/11/devops-vs-itil4-vs-SRE
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Breaking Glass Theory:
Designing a Break Glass
Process to Provide
Security for Privileged
Accounts
https://www.beyondtrust.com/resources/w
ebcasts/break-glass-theory-designing-a-br
eak-glass-process-to-provide-security-for-
privileged-accounts
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Break Glass Procedure:
Granting Emergency
Access to Critical ePHI
Systems
https://hipaa.yale.edu/security/break-glass
-procedure-granting-emergency-access-cri
tical-ephi-systems
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Intelligent Swarming
http://www.serviceinnovation.org/intelligen
t-swarming/
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Welcome to the future of
ITIL 4
https://www.axelos.com/welcome-to-itil-4
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Unmanaged Incidents
https://sre.google/sre-book/managing-inci
dents/
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Being on call?
https://response.pagerduty.com/about/
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Why a 3-tier support
should be replaced with
SWARMING
https://jonstevenshall.medium.com/itsm-d
evops-and-why-the-three-tier-structure-m
ust-be-replaced-with-swarming-91e76ba22
304
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 VAR 9
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
This is How to Use ITIL,
DevOps, and SRE Best
Practices
https://www.blameless.com/blog/itil-devop
s-sre-work-together
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Incident Response
Training,
PagerDuty Academy
https://response.pagerduty.com/training/c
ourses/incident_response/
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Tracking Every Release
https://codeascraft.com/2010/12/08/track-
every-release/
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Accelerating SREs to
On-Call and Beyond
https://sre.google/sre-book/accelerating-s
re-on-call/
7. Chaos Engineering
Chaos engineering:
Stress Testing the Cloud
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/co
nsulting/articles/chaos-engineering-stress-
testing-the-cloud-sre-devops-cloud-value-
devops-reliability-risk-management-test-m
anagement.html
7. Chaos Engineering
EXERCISE
Instrumenting Gremlin
Exercise
https://youtu.be/w_Y6C0QgmL0?t=2912
7. Chaos Engineering
Disaster Recovery
Testing (DiRT)
Test Template
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nxY
uX62SvKst9YuozJCsBEWU9AltvtV9mgnd-H
bzBrA/edit#heading=h.hpgc9ckwivdb
7. Chaos Engineering
Security Chaos
Engineering
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/securi
ty-chaos-engineering/9781492080350/
7. Chaos Engineering
Building Trust &
Confidence with
Security Chaos
Engineering
https://www.infoq.com/presentations/secu
rity-chaos-engineering-trust/
7. Chaos Engineering
Why security chaos
engineering works, and
how to do it right
https://www.techtarget.com/searchsoftwa
requality/tip/Why-security-chaos-engineeri
ng-works-and-how-to-do-it-right
7. Chaos Engineering
Principles of Chaos
Engineering
https://principlesofchaos.org/
7. Chaos Engineering
Chaos Engineering: the
history, principles, and
practice
https://www.gremlin.com/community/tutor
ials/chaos-engineering-the-history-principl
es-and-practice/
7. Chaos Engineering
How to Use Chaos
Engineering to Break
Things Productively
https://www.infoq.com/articles/chaos-engi
neering-security-networking/
7. Chaos Engineering
GameDay Case Study
https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=23712
97
7. Chaos Engineering
Security and chaos
engineering
https://www.rochestersecurity.org/wp-con
tent/uploads/2018/10/RSS2018-B1.pdf
8. SRE is a Form of
DevOps
SRE Essentials
https://learning.oreilly.com/playlists/7b526
ba0-0ba2-4d89-baac-25e9f3877d7f/
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 VAR 10
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
8. SRE is a Form of
DevOps
Building an SRE
Organisation
https://www.slideshare.net/FranklinAngulo
1/building-an-sre-organization-squarespac
e
8. SRE is a Form of
DevOps
A Day in the Life of a New
SRE
https://blog.newrelic.com/engineering/wha
t-does-an-sre-do/
8. SRE is a Form of
DevOps
The Evolving SRE
Engagement Model
https://sre.google/sre-book/evolving-sre-e
ngagement-model/
8. SRE is a Form of
DevOps
I’’m SRE and You Can
Too! —A Fine Manual.
https://youtu.be/Cg877bv_xig?t=1027
8. SRE is a Form of
DevOps
I’m an SRE Lead! Now
What? How to Bootstrap
and Organize Your SRE
Team
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbKfA
wPbQgk
8. SRE is a Form of
DevOps
Psychological Safety for
SRE
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/seeki
ng-sre/9781491978856/ch27.html#psycholo
gical_safety_in_sre
8. SRE is a Form of
DevOps
Liz and Dave on how to
implement SRE
https://learning.oreilly.com/videos/velocity
-conference/9781492025870/978149202587
0-video323188
SRE Book References, Articles, Items and Reports
Site Reliability Engineering
https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/toc/index.html
DevOps Institute SRE
Blueprint
https://devopsinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/SREF-B
lueprint.pdf
The Art of Blameless
Retrospectives
https://www.redhat.com/files/summit/session-assets/2017/S1039
38-krieger.pdf
The Site Reliability
Workbook
https://landing.google.com/sre/workbook/toc/
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/site-reliability-engineerin
g/9781491929117/
Distributed Imageserver
Non-Abstract Large
System Design in 1 Hour
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jW2S9yYZf5DYmri0KlOu1
DFSZMTeOswl6ce5V9xMIOQ/edit?resourcekey=0-hzg8gPkGgiOc6H
bBqalmWg#slide=id.p
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 VAR 11
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
SRE Essentials
https://learning.oreilly.com/playlists/7b526ba0-0ba2-4d89-baac-2
5e9f3877d7f/
Seeking SRE
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/seeking-sre/978149197885
6/
Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/building-secure-and/9781
492083115/
Database Reliability
Engineering
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/database-reliability-engin
eering/9781491925935/
GitHub
https://github.com/dastergon/awesome-sre
Practical Site Reliability
Engineering
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/practical-site-reliability/9
781788839563/
Chaos Engineering
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/chaos-engineering/97814
92043850/
Security Chaos
Engineering
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/security-chaos-engineering/
9781492080350/
Real-World SRE
https://www.amazon.com/Real-World-SRE-Survival-Responding-
Maximizing/dp/1788628888?asin=1788628888&revisionId=&format=
4&depth=1
2021 SRE Report by
Catchpoint
https://pages.catchpoint.com/2021-sre-report
eBay-SRE Case Study
https://tech.ebayinc.com/engineering/sre-case-study-url-distribu
tion-issue-caused-by-application/
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 VAR 12
SRE Practitioner v1.2
Sample Examination
with Answer Key
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Sample Exam with Answer Key 2
1. Why are containers important for modern/distributed architecture?
A. Containers are inherently more secure than monolithic applications
B. Containers are the only processes that run on the cloud
C. Containers enable agile development and deployment
D. Containers support having unique Dev and Prod environments
2. How can you secure a distributed architecture?
A. Introduce a zero trust approach
B. Use ID-based security controls
C. Move to continuous validation
D. All of the above
3. An organization has received numerous complaints about the frequency of system outages and
the lack of communication received during these outages. A team has identified several ways to
improve the organization’s major incident management process. Which option would address the
customer complaints most effectively?
A. Invest in detection and alerting systems
B. Establish an incident command system
C. Implement a new incident management system
D. Use swarming to engage multiple people in incident resolution
4. How does intentional architecture improve consistency and predictability?
A. It introduces purposeful and planned architectural initiatives
B. It introduces architectural initiatives that provide cloud landing zones
C. It helps teams respond quickly to emerging user needs
D. It replaces emergent design practices within teams
5. What kind of scalability challenges does Platform SRE try to solve?
A. Fragmentation
B. Inconsistency
C. Unpredictability
D. All of the above
6. Which of the following is NOT a key attribute considered when defining an alerting strategy?
A. Precision
B. Recall
C. Mean time to repair
D. Reset time
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Sample Exam with Answer Key 3
7. A company is working with partners to develop a new cloud service to be used in a heavily
regulated industry. It wants to ensure that the components being consumed by development
teams have the necessary governance, controls and standards built in. Which approach would
help to achieve this?
A. Adopt a Platform SRE approach
B. Embed SREs in development teams
C. Establish an SRE Center of Excellence
D. Design for security
8. System boundaries help in defining meaningful SLIs and SLOs. Which is a key point to consider
when establishing system boundaries?
A. Defining clear customer-facing capabilities
B. Focusing on individual system components
C. Defining SLAs for customer-facing capabilities
D. Using averages to set and baseline SLIs
9. Which is NOT a step when applying the Three Pillars of Observability?
A. Detect
B. Conduct blameless post-mortem
C. Determine root cause
D. Troubleshoot
10. What is the error budget for an SLO of 95% on page requests served in less than 200ms over the
past 6 hours?
A. Allow 5% failure of page requests served in < 200ms over past 24 hours
B. Allow 5% failure of page requests served in < 200ms over past 6 hours
C. Allow 5% failure of 95% percentile latency over past 6 hours
D. Allow 5% failure of service availability for the past 6 hours
11. An organization in the early stages of Agile and DevOps adoption is considering site
reliability engineering. While the organization has been able to increase its deployment
frequency, the change failure rate has also increased, and customer experience is
suffering. How BEST could site reliability engineers benefit this organization?
A. By collaborating with developers to determine who is causing failed
changes
B. By helping the organization understand how to balance speed and stability
C. By documenting and automating operational tasks
D. By conducting production readiness reviews and approving changes prior to
implementation
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Sample Exam with Answer Key 4
12. When a 3rd party downstream system provides an error rate of 1%, and your backend has an error
rate of 0.1%, what is the error rate that will be inherited by your middle-tier?
A. 1.1%
B. 0.1%
C. 1%
D. 1.2%
13. An SRE wants to establish SLOs for the customer-facing capabilities of a system. This is a
complex system that relies on several third-party services. What should the SRE identify FIRST?
A. System boundaries
B. SLIs for system components
C. Error rates of third-party services
D. SLIs for each capability
14. Which is NOT one of the three C’s of incident response?
A. Communicate between responders
B. Coordinate the response
C. Maintain control
D. Identify the cause
15. Which approach to the application lifecycle involves loosely coupled microservices and
serverless functions?
A. Re-Architect / Cloud-Native
B. Retain & Optimize
C. Lift & Shift
D. Re-factor
16. Which can be used to maintain a balance between shipping new features and maintaining
reliability?
A. Error budgets
B. Service level objectives
C. Long window analysis
D. Service level indicators
17. An organization has been practicing AIOps for 3 years and is in the ‘predictive’ phase of maturity.
At this stage, what benefits are realized from practicing AIOps?
A. Pattern detection for early alerts
B. Faster, better diagnostics
C. Anomaly detection anticipates novel problems
D. Impacts are automatically prevented
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Sample Exam with Answer Key 5
18. An organization wants SREs to support product release and launch coordination and evaluate
architecture readiness. Which is the BEST approach for this company to take?
A. System level SREs
B. Application level SREs
C. Enterprise level SREs
D. SRE Center of Excellence
19. Which is an aim of non-abstract large-scale design?
A. Satisfy initial requirements
B. Produce a whiteboard design
C. Address details that emerge during iterations
D. Both A and C
20. What is a node in Kubernetes?
A. A machine that coordinates the scheduling of containers
B. A tool for starting a Kubernetes cluster on a local machine
C. A worker machine
D. The most basic unit
21. Which represents the modern security landscape?
A. Fully zero trust
B. ID-based controls
C. Project based engagement
D. Both A and B
22. Which deployment approach involves running both the old and new versions of code at the same
time?
A. Rolling upgrade
B. Canary
C. Blue-green
D. Both A and B
23. An IT organization using a microservices architecture wants to improve the resiliency of its
services. What can this organization do to prevent a service failure from cascading to other
services?
A. Implement a circuit breaker
B. Leverage the MITRE ATT&CK framework
C. Implement a supervisor agent
D. Use canary deployments
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Sample Exam with Answer Key 6
24. Which incident management best practice involves giving autonomy to incident responders?
A. Trust
B. Prepare
C. Introspect
D. Practice
25. Which SRE anti-pattern increases the lead time required to make changes?
A. Investigating false positives
B. Conducting production readiness reviews
C. Moving Ops professionals closer to systems
D. Migrating to an immutable infrastructure
26. In the build stage, SREs get involved in various activities. Which activity related to deploying to
production would an SRE perform?
A. Automated UAT
B. Security check
C. On-call support
D. B/G deployment
27. Which is the correct definition of chaos engineering?
A. Chaos engineering is the discipline of experimenting on a distributed system in order to build
confidence in the system’s ability to withstand turbulent conditions
B. Chaos engineering is the practice of breaking things in production during normal business
hours in order to test monitoring systems
C. Chaos engineering is the discipline of experimenting on an individual system component in
order to build confidence in that component
D. Chaos engineering is the discipline of experimenting on a distributed system in order to build
confidence in the system’s ability to deliver the expected functionality
28. Which of the following is NOT a myth about chaos engineering?
A. Chaos engineering is about breaking things
B. Chaos engineering is about injecting random chaos experiments and seeing what happens
C. Chaos engineering experiments conducted in non-production environments can deliver value
D. Chaos engineering is only for cloud-based services
29. To prevent future outages, which should SREs aim to identify?
A. Human errors
B. Contributing factors
C. Singular root causes
D. Process errors
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Sample Exam with Answer Key 7
30. An organization has moved from a traditional siloed culture to cross-functional product teams. A
newly formed SRE team is exploring needed changes to the organization's incident management
procedures. What is the FIRST change this team should make?
A. Designate clearly defined roles
B. Redefine the responsibilities of each support tier
C. Use AI/ML to automate as much as possible
D. Develop a communication strategy
31. An organization uses AIOps and a big data platform for dynamic thresholding and for identifying
new changes to the topology of the system. Which capability of AIOps does this represent??
A. Automating responses
B. Understanding customer patterns
C. Intelligent routing
D. Anomaly detection
32. What is the sequence of activities when running AIOps in production?
A. Organize, Collect, Analyze, Infuse
B. Collect, Organize, Analyze, Infuse
C. Gather, Organize, Analyze, Infuse
D. Collect, Correlate, Analyze, Introduce
33. An organization’s product teams have the ability to determine whether users are able to access
applications and if those applications are performing within appropriate limits. They lack,
however, the ability to better understand the inner workings of these systems. Which would
provide the teams this capability?
A. Monitoring
B. Observability
C. AIOps
D. Chaos engineering
34. According to Google`s Golden Signals, what is the highest level in the pyramid?
A. Errors
B. Latency
C. Saturation
D. Traffic
35. In a SRE possible implementation, where does the SRE role fit in?
A. Part of the Development Team
B. Outside the Value Stream
C. In the SRE Product and Platform Team
D. In Operations
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Sample Exam with Answer Key 8
36. A newly formed team of SREs has had some quick wins by working with engineers and product
owners to drive automation and improve incident handling. The team is working to get buy-in for
SLOs and error budgets to affect how work is prioritized and matured in the organization. Which
behavioral skills are MOST needed in this situation?
A. Adaptability skills
B. Decision making skills
C. Negotiation and influencing skills
D. Conflict management skills
37. Which statement about real user monitoring (RUM) and synthetic monitoring is CORRECT?
A. Both monitor the same transaction by users
B. RUM has low coverage and synthetic monitoring has wide coverage
C. RUM is run at a regular frequency and synthetic monitoring has no set frequency
D. RUM captures actual user traffic and synthetic monitoring programmatically generates traffic
38. In the context of DataOps, what does operationalizing data involve?
A. Consolidating data to a single source of truth
B. Data orchestration
C. Data governance
D. All of the above
39. Joe’s company faced a major incident recently, and as an SRE he ensured that a good
postmortem report was prepared. In addition to using the 5 Whys technique, what are other ways
that Joe can ensure he is preparing a good report?
A. Use a blameless approach
B. Include a timeline chronology
C. Capture lessons learned
D. All of the above
40. To introduce chaos engineering, the product team is thinking of “quietly” running a series of
experiments that confirm known weaknesses in a system. The team can then use the results of
these experiments to justify needed improvements. What is the likely outcome of this approach?
A. Evidence of the value of chaos engineering
B. Resistance to future chaos engineering efforts
C. Buy-in from the people who support the system
D. Confidence in the ability to detect system weaknesses
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.2 Sample Exam with Answer Key 9
SRE Practitioner v1.2 - Sample Exam Answer Key
Question
Correct Answer
Module
1
C
3
2
D
3
3
B
6
4
A
3
5
D
5
6
C
1
7
A
5
8
A
2
9
B
4
10
B
2
11
B
1
12
A
2
13
A
2
14
D
6
15
A
4
16
A
2
17
C
5
18
A
3
19
D
3
20
C
3
21
D
7
22
D
3
23
A
3
24
A
6
25
B
1
26
D
8
27
A
7
28
C
7
29
B
1
30
A
6
31
D
5
32
B
5
33
B
4
34
C
4
35
C
8
36
C
8
37
D
4
38
D
5
39
D
1
40
B
7
Y
our Path to
DevOps Success
DevOps Institute is dedicated to advancing the
human elements of DevOps success. Our goal is
to help advance careers and support emerging
practices using a role-based approach to
certification which focuses on the most modern
competencies and hireable skills required by
today’s organizations adopting DevOps.
Take the next steps in your learning and
certification journey to DevOps success.
Click on a certification or visit
www.devopsinstitute.com/certifications
to learn more.
Become a Member
Join the fastest growing global community of DevOps practitioners
and professionals and gain access to invaluable learning content, the
latest news, events, emerging practices, develop your network and
advance your career.
You belong.
www.devopsinstitute.com/membership