What is the difference between DevOps and traditional IT operations?

Traditional IT operations treat development and infrastructure as separate concerns with handoffs between teams. DevOps breaks down that wall by automating the entire software delivery process from code commit to production deployment. Development teams take ownership of running their code, infrastructure is defined as code that can be version-controlled and reviewed, and deployments happen continuously rather than in scheduled release windows. The result is faster delivery, fewer errors, and quicker recovery when issues occur.

How quickly can we start deploying more frequently after implementing CI/CD?

Teams typically see dramatic improvement within weeks of implementing proper CI/CD pipelines. Moving from monthly releases to weekly is common in the first month. Daily deployments usually follow within two to three months as confidence in automation grows. Some teams achieve multiple deployments per day. The key is building trust through automated testing, monitoring, and rollback capabilities. We start with lower-risk applications to prove the process before applying it to critical systems.

Should we use Kubernetes or is it overkill for our scale?

Kubernetes has become the industry standard for container orchestration, but it adds significant operational complexity. For smaller applications or teams, managed container services like AWS ECS or Azure Container Apps provide similar benefits with less overhead. Kubernetes makes sense when you run many different services, need sophisticated deployment strategies like canary releases, or want portability across cloud providers. We assess your actual requirements rather than defaulting to the most complex solution.

How do you handle infrastructure as code for existing environments?

For existing environments, we take an incremental approach rather than trying to rewrite everything at once. We start by documenting current infrastructure and identifying the most critical or frequently-changing components. These get converted to Terraform or CloudFormation first. New infrastructure is created exclusively through code from day one. Over time, the IaC coverage expands until the entire environment is codified. This approach minimizes risk while building team familiarity with the tools.

What monitoring and observability do we need for a DevOps environment?

At minimum, you need application performance monitoring, infrastructure metrics, log aggregation, and alerting. We typically implement tools like Datadog, New Relic, or open-source alternatives like Prometheus and Grafana. Beyond collecting data, we focus on actionable insights: dashboards that answer real questions, alerts that require human attention rather than noise, and runbooks that help operators respond to incidents. Observability should tell you why something broke, not just that it broke.