continuous delivery versus devops versus configuration management

Having worked in the field today called DevOps since around 2003, I've noticed that we more or less do the same thing regardless of what its currently called. When it works well anyway. This is how I see it;

• Continuous Delivery emphasizes the payoff in the end, the increased business value of having good value adding releases hit prodoction quite often.

• DevOps emphasizes how Continuous Delivery is to be implemented at the people level.

Devs and Ops being mortal enemies is not the natural state of things, We could and should work together instead.

• Configuration Management is the perceived need to bring order in the chaos that is the devevelopment process.

Quite often my work title is Configuration Manager. This title is just two words side by side, and people associate different meanings to the concept. For instance, a person that keeps track of version numbers, that go into a dusty binder. This idea seems more prevalent with the ITIL crowd. What I do in practise, however, is better described in agile terms as being a product owner for the continous delivery machinery. Or, being a DevOps guy.

So, the terminology describing the fields varies a bit, but the overall aim is more or less the same over the years. Enable people to work togehter. Enable the agile process to function efficiently with tool support.

It's an interesting field to be sure, and keeping track of numbers is only the tiniest part of it.