SRE Practitioner
SM
Exam Study Guide
DevOps 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.
Certification 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:
● Course Description
● Examination Requirements
● DevOps Glossary of Terms
● Value Added Resources
● Sample Exam(s) with Answer Key
These 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.
If you have any questions, please contact our DevOps Institute Customer Service team
at CustomerService@DevOpsInstitute.com
.
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 economically and
reliably scale services 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 through the use of 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 do 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.
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?
©DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Course Description July 2021
7. Curating data using AI to move from reactive to proactive and predictive incident
management. Also, how do 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
COURSE OUTLINE
● Course Introduction
● Module 1: SRE Anti-patterns
● Module 2: SLO is a Proxy for Customer Happiness
● Module 3: Building Secure and Reliable Systems
● Module 4: Full-Stack Observability
● Module 5: Platform Engineering and AIOPs
● Module 6: SRE & Incident Response Management
● Module 7: Chaos Engineering
● Module 8: SRE is the Purest form of DevOps
● Post-class assignments
©DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Course Description July 2021
Site Reliability
Engineering (SRE)
Practitioner
SM
Examination Requirements
©
DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Examination Requirements July 2021
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Practitioner
SM
Certificate
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:
● Candidates must have successfully completed and earned 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 Difficulty
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.
©
DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Examination Requirements July 2021
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 a
mandatory prerequisite to sit the SRE Practitioner exam.
It is highly recommended that candidates complete the Site
Reliability Engineering (SRE) Practitioner course from an accredited
DevOps Institute Education Partner.
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
©
DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Examination Requirements July 2021
SREP – 5:
Using Platform Engineering & AIOps
6
SREP – 6:
SRE & Incident Response Management
4
SREP – 7:
Chaos Engineering
4
SREP - 8:
SRE is the Purest Form of DevOps
3
©
DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Examination Requirements July 2021
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.
AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence/Machine
Learning)
Disaster Recovery
AIOps
Distributed Ecosystems
Anti-Patterns
Distributed Tracing
Application Lifecycle Development
Domain Name System (DNS)
Auto Remediation
DREAD
Blameless Post-mortems
Error Budget
Break Glass Mechanism
Game Days
Business Context
Google's Golden Signals
Canary Deployment
Immutable Framework
Capacity Planning
Incident Command Framework
Change Advisory Board (CAB)
Incident Response Management
Chaos Engineering
Instrumentation
Circuit Breaker
ITOps
Closed Loop Response (CLR)
Key Principles of Incident Response
Containers
Kubernetes
Custom Resource Definition (CRD)
Lifecycle Management
DataOps
Major Incident Response
Development Lifecycle
Mean Time to Detect (MTTD)
DiRT
Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
Microservices
©
DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Examination Requirements July 2021
MITRE ATT&CK
Service Mesh
MLOps
Shift-Left
Monitoring
Site Reliability Engineering Center of
Excellence
Multiservice Architecture
STRIDE
Network Operations Center (NOC)
Swarming
Non-Abstract Large Scale Design
(NALSD)
System Boundaries
"North Star"
Telemetry
Observability
The Three Ways
OODA Loop
Three Pillars of Observability
Platform SRE
USE
Quality of Service (QOS)
Wheel of Misfortune
Rapid Elasticity
Reactive Manifesto
Real User Monitoring (RUM)
Reliability
Resiliency
Scale-up
Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Service Level Indicator (SLI)
Service Level Objective (SLO)
©
DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Examination Requirements July 2021
Term
Definition
Course Appearances
12-Factor App Design
A methodology for building modern,
scalable, maintainable software-as-a-
service applications.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem 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
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 an unauthorized identity access
to a resource.
DevSecOps Foundation
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
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 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 project management method for
complex projects that divides tasks into
small "sprints" of work with frequent
reassessment and adaptation of plans.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, Site Reliability
Engineering
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
Agile Coach
Help teams master Agile development and
DevOps practices; enables productive
ways of working and collaboration.
DevOps Leader
Agile Enterprise
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.org
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
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
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
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
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
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
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
Analytics
Test results processed and presented in an
organized manner in accordance with
analysis methods and criterion.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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
Anti-pattern
A commonly reinvented but poor solution
to a problem.
DevOps Foundation
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
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
Application
Performance
Management (APM)
APM is the monitoring and management of
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
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
Application
Programming
Interface (API) Testing
The purpose of the test is to determine if an
API for an EUT functions as
expected.fgdsgsgds
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation
Application Release
Controlled continuous delivery pipeline
capabilities including automation (release
upon code commit).
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation
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
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
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
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
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
Artifact Repository
Store for binaries, reports and metadata.
Example tools include: JFrog Artifactory,
Sonatype Nexus.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps 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
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
Automated rollback
If a failure is detected during a
deployment, an operator (or an
automated process) will verify the failure
and rollback the failing release to the
previous known working state.
Site Reliability Engineering
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 labelled 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
Bug
An error or defect in software that results in
an unexpected or system-degrading
condition.
DevSecOps 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
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 take critical services offline.
Site Reliability Engineering
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
The benefit of an approach to key business
KPIs.
DevOps Leader
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
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
Capacity
An estimate of the total amount of
engineering time available for a given
Sprint.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
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
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
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
Change Failure Rate
A measure of the percentage of
failed/rolled back changes.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps 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
change to delivery of the change.
DevOps Foundation
Change Leader
Development Model
Jim Canterucci's model for five levels of
change leader capability.
DevOps Leader
Change
Management
Process that controls all changes
throughout their lifecycle. (ITIL definition)
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader,
DevSecOps 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
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
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 area 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
Check‐in
Action of submitting a software change
into a system version management system.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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
Clear‐Box
Same as Glass‐Box Testing and White‐Box
Testing.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Cloud Computing
The practice of using remote servers hosted
on the internet to host applications rather
than local servers in a private datacenter.
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability Engineering
Cloud-Native
Native cloud applications (NCA) are
designed for cloud computing.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation
Cloudbees
Cloudbees is a commercially supported
proprietary automation framework tool
which works with and enhances Jenkins by
providing enterprise levels support and
add-on functionality.
Continuous Testing
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
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
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
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
Code Review
Software engineers inspect each other's
source code to detect coding or code
formatting errors.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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
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
Compatibility Test
Test with the purpose to determine if and
EUT interoperates with another EUT such as
peer‐to‐peer applications or protocols.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
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
Conformance Test
The purpose of the test is to determine if an
EUT complies to a standard.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Constraint
Limitation or restriction; something that
constrains. See also bottl eneck.
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
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
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
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 which 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
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
Continuous
Deployment
A set of practices that enable every
change that passes automated tests to be
automatically deployed to production.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps 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
Continuous
Improvement
Based on Deming's Plan-Do-Check-Act, a
model for ensure ongoing efforts to
improve products, processes and services.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader
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
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
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
Continuous Testing
(CT)
This is a class of terms relevant to testing
and verification of an EUT in a DevOps
environment.
DevOps
Foundation, Continuous
Delivery Ecosystem
Foundation, Continuous
Testing 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 which design systems are
constrained to produce designs which are
copies of the communication structures of
these organizations.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Leader
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
Cultural Iceberg
A metaphor that visualizes the difference
between observable (above the water)
and non-observable (below the waterline)
elements of culture.
DevOps Leader
Culture
(Organizational
Culture)
The values and behaviors that contribute to
the unique psychosocial environment of an
organization.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps 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 queue, and
departure.
DevOps Leader
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
Customer Reliability
Engineer (CRE)
CRE is what you get when you take the
principles and lessons of SRE and apply
them towards customers.
Sire Reliability Engineering
Cycle Time
A measure of the time from start of work to
ready for delivery.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader.
DevSecOps 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
Dashboard
Graphical display of summarized test
results.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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
Definition of Done
A shared understanding of expectations
that the Increment must live up to in order
to be releasable into production.
(Scrum.org)
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps Leader
Delivery Cadence
The frequency of deliveries. E.g. # deliveries
per day, per week, etc.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Delivery Package
Set of release items (files, images, etc.) that
are packaged for deployment.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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
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. Synopisis, 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
Design for Testability
An EUT is designed with features which
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
Developer (Dev)
Individual who has 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
Device Under Test
(DUT)
The DUT is a device (e.g. router or switch)
being tested.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
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." (Source: Wikipedia)
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
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 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
organisational 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 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 realisation.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps
Foundation, Continuous
Testing 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
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
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
Dynamic Application
Security Testing (DAST)
A type of testing that runs against built
code to test exposed interfaces.
DevSecOps Foundation
EggPlant
Automated function and regression testing
of enterprise applications. Licensed by Test
Plant.
Continuous Testing
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
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
Entity Under Test (EUT)
This is a class of terms which refers to 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
Epic
A collection of related user stories that may
need to be worked on across multiple
Sprints.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
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
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
Error Tracking
Tools to easily discover and show the errors
that 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
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
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
Failure Rate
Fail verdicts per unit of time.
DevOps Foundation,
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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
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
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
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
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
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
Framework
Backbone for plugging in tools. Launches
automated tasks, collects results from
automated tasks.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
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
Functional Testing
Tests to determine if the functional
operation of the service is as expected.
Site Reliability Engineering
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
Fuzzing
Fuzzing or fuzz testing is an automated
software testing practice that inputs invalid,
unexpected, or random data into
applications.
DevSecOps Foundation
Gated Commits
Define and obtain consensus for 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
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
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
Goal‐seeking tests
The purpose of the test is to determine an
EUT's performance boundaries, using
incrementally stresses until the EUT reaches
a 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
Governance, Risk
Management and
Compliance (GRC)
A 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
Gray‐Box
Test cases use a limited knowledge of the
internal design structure of the EUT.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Increment
Potentially shippable completed work that
is the outcome of a Sprint.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation
Incremental Rollout
Incremental rollout means 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
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
Infrastructure as Code
The practice of using code (scripts) to
configure and manage infrastructure.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
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
Infrastructure‐as‐a‐
Service (IaaS)
On‐demand access to a shared pool of
configurable computing resources.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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
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
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)
Implementation and management of
quality IT services that meet the needs of
the business. (ITIL definition)
DevOps Foundation, Site
Reliability Engineering
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
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
Kaizen
The practice of continuous improvement.
DevOps 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
Keywords‐Based
Test cases are created using pre‐defined
names that reference programs useful for
testing.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Knowledge
Management
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 organisational 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
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
Laloux (Culture
Models)
Frederic Laloux created a model for
understanding organizational culture.
DevSecOps Foundation
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 recieved
e.g. by a client.
Site Reliability Engineering
Laws of Systems
Thinking
In his book 'The Fifth Discipline', Peter Senge
outlines eleven laws will help the
understanding of business systems and to
identify behaviors for addressing complex
business problems.
DevOps Leader
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
Lean (adjective)
Spare, economical. Lacking richness or
abundance.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
Lean Canvas
Lean Canvas is a 1-page business plan
template.
DevOps Leader
Lean Enterprise
Organization that strategically applies the
key ideas behind lean production across
the enterprise.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
Lean IT
Applying the key ideas behind lean
production to the development and
management of IT products and services.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps 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 which 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
LoadRunner
Tool used to test applications, measuring
system behavior and performance under
load. Licensed by HP.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Log
Serialized report of details such as test
activities and EUT console logs.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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
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
Machine Learning
Data analysis that uses algorithms that
learn from data.
DevOps 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
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
Mean Time Between
Failures (MTBF)
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
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
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
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
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
Mental Models
A mental model is an explanation of
someone's thought process about how
something works in the real world.
DevOps Leader
Merge
Action of integrating a software changes
together into a software version
management system.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Metric
Something that is measured and reported
upon to help manage a process, IT service
or activity.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps 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
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
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
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
Model‐Based
Test cases are automatically derived from
a model of the entity under test. Example
tool: Tricentus
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Monitoring
The use of a hardware or software
component to monitor the system
resources and performance of a computer
service.
Site Reliability Engineering
Monitoring Tools
Tools that allow IT organizations to identify
specific issues of specific releases and to
understand the impact on end-users.
DevOps Leader
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
Multi-factor
Authentication
The practice of using 2 or more factors for
authentication. Often used synonymously
with 2-factor Authentication.
DevSecOps Foundation
Multi‐cloud
Multi‐cloud DevOps solutions provide on‐
demand multi‐tenant access to
development and test environments.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation
Network Reliability
Engineer (NRE)
Someone who applies a reliability
engineering approach to measure and
automate the reliability of networks.
Site Reliability Engineering
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
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
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
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
Operations
Management
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
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
Organization Model
For DevOps, an approach that models
Spotify's Squad approach for organizing IT.
DevOps Leader
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 which refers 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
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
Problem
The underlying cause of one or more
incidents. (ITIL definition)
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
Process
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
Process Changes
Focuses on changes to standard IT process,
such as software development practices,
ITIL processes, change management,
approvals etc.
DevOps Leader
Process Owner
Role accountable for the overall quality of
a process. 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 timeboxed 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
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 Leader
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
Provision Platforms
Tools that provide platforms for provisioning
infrastructure (e.g., Puppet, Chef, Salt).
DevOps Leader
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
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
Regression testing
The purpose of the test is to determine if a
new version of an EUT has broken
somethings that worked previously.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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
Release
Software that is built, tested and deployed
into the production environment.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation
Release Acceptance
Criteria
Measurable attributes for a release
package which determine whether a
release candidate is acceptable for
deployment to customers.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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
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
Release Management
Process that manages releases and
underpins Continuous Delivery and the
Deployment Pipeline.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps 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
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
Reliability
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
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
Remediation
Action to resolve a problem found during
DevOps processes. E.g. Roll‐back changes
for an EUT change that resulted in a CT a
test case fail verdict.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Remediation Plan
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 than 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
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. Software
architecture style of the world‐wide web.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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)
Difference between the benefit achieved
and the cost to achieve that benefit,
expressed as a percentage.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps 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
Risk
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
Risk Event
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
Scaled Agile
Framework (SAFE)
A proven, publicly available, framework for
applying Lean-Agile principles and
practices at an enterprise scale.
DevOps 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
Scrum Pillars
Pillars that uphold the Scrum framework
that include: Transparency, Inspection and
Adaption.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
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
Scrum Values
A set of fundamental values and qualities
underpinning the Scrum framework:
commitment, focus, openness, respect and
courage.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
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
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 tool chains and workflows.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps 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
Selenium
Popular open‐source tool for software
testing GUI and web applications.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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.
Site Reliability Engineering
Serverless
A code execution paradigm were 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
Service
Means of delivering value to customers by
facilitating outcomes customers want to
achieve without the ownership of specific
costs and risks.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps 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)
Site Reliability Engineering
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
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
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
Infrastructures 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
SilkTest
Automated function and regression testing
of enterprise applications. Licensed by
Borland.
Continuous Testing
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
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
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
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
Snapshot
Report of pass/fail results for a specific
build.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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
Software Composition
Analysis
A tool that checks for libraries or functions
in source code that have known
vulnerabilities.
DevSecOps 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
Software Delivery
Lifecycle (SDLC)
The process used to design, develop and
test high quality software.
DevOps Leader, Site
Reliability Engineering
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
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
Source Code Tools
Repositories for controlling source code for
key assets (application and infrastructure)
as a single source of truth.
DevOps Foundation,
DevOps Leader
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
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
Sprint Goal
Purpose and objective of a Sprint, often
expressed as a business problem that is
going to be solved.
Certified Agile Service
Manager
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Target Operating
Model
A description of the desired state of
the operating model of an organisation.
DevOps Leader
Teal Organization
An emerging organizational paradigm that
advocates a level of consciousness
including all previous world views within the
operations of an organisation.
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
Techno-Economic
Paradigm Shifts
Techno-economic paradigm shifts are at
the core of general, innovation-based
theory of economic and societal
development as conceived by Carlota
Perez.
DevOps Leader
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
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
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
Test Creation Methods
This is a class of test terms which refers to
the methodology used to create test
cases.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
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
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.), 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
Test Fast
A CT tenet referring to accelerated testing.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Test Framework
A set of processes, procedures, abstract
concept and environment in which
automated tests are designed and
implemented.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
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
Test Hierarchy
This is a class of terms describes the
organization of tests into groups.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
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
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 result (verdict).
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Test Roles
This class of terms identifies general roles
and responsibilities for people relevant to
testing.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Test Script
Automated test case. A single test script
may be implemented one or more test
cases depending on the data.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
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
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
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
Test Trend
History of verdicts.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Test Type
Class that indicates what the purpose of
the test is.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Test Version
The version of files used to test a specific
build.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Tester
Individual who has responsibility to test a
system or service.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
Testing Tools
Tools that verify code quality before
passing the build.
DevOps Leader
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
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
The Three Ways
Key principles of DevOps – Flow, Feedback,
Continuous experimentation and learning.
DevOps Foundation,
DevSecOps Foundation,
Site Reliability Engineering
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
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.
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
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 Market
The period of time between when an idea
is conceived and when it is available to
customers.
DevOps Leader
Time to Value
Measure of the time it takes for the business
to realize value from a feature or service.
DevOps
Foundation, DevSecOps
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
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
Tool
This class describes tools that orchestrate,
automate, simulate and monitor EUT's and
infrastructures.
Continuous Delivery
Ecosystem Foundation,
Continuous Testing
Foundation
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
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
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
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).
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
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
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
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 behaviour
with the aim of preventing the latter.
Site Reliability Engineering
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
Value Added Time
The amount of time spent on an activity
that creates value (e.g., development,
testing).
DevOps Leader
Value Efficiency
Being able to produce value with the
minimum amount of time and resources.
DevOps Leader
Value Stream
All of the activities to go from a customer
request to a delivered product or service.
DevOps 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
Mapping
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
The ability to visualize the flow of value
delivery through the DevOps lifecycle.
Gitlab CI and the Jenkins extension (from
Cloud Bees) DevOptics can provide this
visualization.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, Site Reliability
Engineering
Variable Speed IT
An approach where traditional and digital
processes co-exist within an organization
while moving at their own speed.
DevOps Foundation
Velocity
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
Version control tools
Ensure a 'single source of truth' and enable
change control and tracking for all
production artifacts.
DevOps 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
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
Vulnerability
Intelligence
Information describing a known
vulnerability, including affected software
by version, relative severity of the
vulnerability (for example, does it result in
escalation of privileges for user role, or does
it cause a denial of service), 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
Waste (Lean
Manufacturing)
Any activity that does not add value to a
process, product or service.
Certified Agile Service
Manager, DevOps
Foundation, DevOps
Leader
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)
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
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
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
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
Workaround
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
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
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 VAR 1
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
=7Y06GIHlZl8
Module 2
SLO is the Proxy for Customer
Happiness
SLI/SLOs Deep Dive with
David Blank Edelman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=dplGoewF4DA
Module 3
Building Secure and Reliable Systems
Building Secure & Reliable Systems
with Heather Adkins
https://youtu.be/0LlBmPW3F1c?t=690
Assignment
Non-Abstract Large Scale Design
Assignment
Google SRE classroom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=bOXkgMuVuYY
Module 4
Full Stack Observability
OpenTelemetry with
Constance Caramanolis
https://youtu.be/S0-t-Mgbhsc?t=119
Module 5
Using Platform Engineering & AIOps
AI in Ops with Stylianos Kampakis
https://youtu.be/GSS_rTXkpFU?t=203
This document provides links to articles and videos related to the Site Reliability
Engineering (SRE) Practitioner course from DevOps Institute. This information is
provided to enhance your understanding of SRE-related concepts and terms
and is not examinable. Of course, there is a wealth of other videos, blogs and
case studies on the web. We welcome suggestions for additions.
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 VAR 2
Module 6
SRE & Incident Response
Management
Runbook Automation with
Damon Edwards
https://youtu.be/uyJ-FJXD5co?t=140
Assignment
Instrumenting Gremlin Assignment
https://youtu.be/w_Y6C0QgmL0?t=2
912
Module 7
Chaos Engineering
Practical Chaos Engineering
Adrian Hornsby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=
733&v=w_Y6C0QgmL0&feature=yout
u.be
Module 8
SRE is the Purest Form of DevOps
SRE and Digital Business
https://youtu.be/T01ge8byOoU?t=25
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=148
Module 2
SLO is the Proxy for Customer
Happiness
Home Depot
https://sre.google/workbook/slo-
engineering-case-studies/
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
AWS summary of SLAs
SLAs for Microsoft Azure
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 VAR 3
Cloud SLAs
Google Cloud Platform SLAs
Module 3
Building Secure and Reliable Systems
Google Chrome Security Team
https://youtu.be/fNyT7HNKQfk?t=332
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/vie
w/building-secure-
and/9781492083115/ch19.html#onen
ine_case_study_chrome_security_tea
m
Module 4
Full Stack Observability
Planet Case Study
https://youtu.be/5aNeNhKNlUM?t=12
83
Module 5
Using Platform Engineering & AIOps
How FedEx uses AIOps to improve
Operational Efficiencies’
https://opusresearch.net/wordpress/
2017/10/02/case-study-how-fedex-is-
leveraging-intelligent-assistants-ai-
and-natural-language-
understanding/
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-
management-and-alerting-with-
splunk.html
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-
technologies-case-study/
Module 8
SRE is the Purest Form of DevOps
AirBnB’s adoption of practical SRE
https://youtu.be/T01ge8byOoU?t=25
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 VAR 4
References to Articles
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/
conference-program/presentation/bisset
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Google Explains Why
Others Are Doing SRE
Wrong
https://www.infoq.com/news/2018/07/goo
gle-explains-sre/
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Pets, Cattle, Chickens,
and Snowflakes
https://subscription.packtpub.com/book/vi
rtualization_and_cloud/9781785882753/1/c
h01lvl1sec08/pets-cattle-chickens-and-
snowflakes
1. SRE Anti-patterns
TechBiz Do you know
what SRE is and what it
can do for your
business?
https://en.paradigmadigital.com/techbiz/
do-you-know-what-sre-is-and-what-it-can-
do-for-your-business/
1. SRE Anti-patterns
SRE Anti-patterns in
everyday life and what
do they teach us
https://content.sonatype.com/2020addo-
sre/addo2020-sre-
petoff?__hstc=160429922.baf9e6a9a6b98c
7f5180e92ae5a71875.161348730006.116151
15690600.1615123090615.4&__hssc=160429
922.3.1615123090615&__hsfp=1318888879
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-
engineering-thats-music-to-my-ears/
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1. SRE Anti-patterns
SRE Anti-Pattern: “Do it.
Do it again. Then do it
again.”
https://www.rundeck.com/blog/sre-anti-
pattern-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
1. SRE Anti-patterns
Postmortem Culture:
Learning from Failure
https://sre.google/workbook/postmortem-
culture/
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
10 Steps to Implement
SLO in Your Organisation
https://content.sonatype.com/2020addo-
sre/addo2020-sre-
barteneva?__hstc=160429922.baf9e6a9a6
b98c7f5180e92ae5a71875.1613487300061.1
615115690600.1615123090615.4&__hssc=16
0429922.3.1615123090615&__hsfp=1318888
879
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
I want all the 9s….. in my
SLO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhJb
brKy1pw&t=2268s
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
Evernote’s SLO Story
(Case Study)
https://sre.google/workbook/slo-
engineering-case-studies/
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
The Home Depot Case
Story VALET
https://sre.google/workbook/slo-
engineering-case-studies/
2. SLO is the proxy for
Customer Happiness
ERROR BUDGET Practical
application when 3rd
party software is
involved
https://youtu.be/uBbE8HTXbaw?t=882
3. Building Secure
and Reliable Systems
Non-Abstract Large-
Scale Design NALSD
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1
jW2S9yYZf5DYmri0KlOu1DFSZMTeOswl6ce5
V9xMIOQ/edit?resourcekey=0-
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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_v
ersus_security_design_cons
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
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.h
tml
3. Building Secure
and Reliable Systems
Data Privacy and
Security
https://www.varonis.com/blog/data-
privacy/
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-
containers-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
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
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3. Building Secure
and Reliable Systems
Kubernetes Up &
Running
https://clouddamcdnprodep.azureedge.n
et/gdc/gdckTlBtc/original
4. Full Stack
Observability
A Collection of Best
Practices for Production
Services
https://sre.google/sre-book/service-best-
practices/
4. Full Stack
Observability
Differences Between
Synthetic Monitoring
and Real User
Monitoring
https://stackify.com/rum-vs-synthetic-
monitoring/
4. Full Stack
Observability
Good article on
Observability and
Monitoring
https://youtu.be/pY44UX8j4Pc?t=26
4. Full Stack
Observability
Observability — A 3-
Year Retrospective
https://thenewstack.io/observability-a-3-
year-retrospective/
4. Full Stack
Observability
Monitoring and
Observability — What’s
the Difference and Why
Does It Matter?
https://thenewstack.io/monitoring-and-
observability-whats-the-difference-and-
why-does-it-matter/
4. Full Stack
Observability
Observability at Google
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/obser
vability-at-
google/0636920424239/video329911.html
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
Building Self-Healing
with AIOps
https://www.dynatrace.com/news/blog/sh
ift-left-sre-building-self-healing-into-your-
cloud-delivery-pipeline/
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
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5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
The Seven Steps to
Implement #DataOps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muhs
8zJnETM
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
Proactively Detect
Unusual Behavior
https://newrelic.com/lp/aiops?utm_camp
aign=AIOps-
Emerging&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source
=google&utm_content=AIO_LP&fiscal_year
=FY21&quarter=Q4&gtm=OPS&program=ai
ops&ad_type=None&geo=EMERGING&ut
m_term=aiops&utm_device=c&_bt=504169
602696&_bm=e&_bn=g&gclid=Cj0KCQjw5
PGFBhC2ARIsAIFIMNeggGr9EMZ_f9XTeybtx
JldKxxZEFp1g4oMXpPyaOq5NUBHT5FyWFU
aAn6uEALw_wcB
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
Gartner Market Guide
for AIOps Platforms,
2021
https://digitate.com/market-guide-for-
aiops-
platforms/?utm_source=google&utm_medi
um=search&utm_campaign=corporate-
aiops&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-
engineering/
5. Platform
Engineering and
AIOPs
Top 5 things to know
about Platform
Engineering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htQfj
klTNrM
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
High Velocity IT
https://www.axelos.com/news/blogs/janu
ary-2020/itil-4-high-velocity-it-the-digital-
enterprise
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
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6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Valuable Investments,
Fast Development,
Resilient Operations
https://www.itsmacademy.com/content/
What_is_ITIL_4_HVIT.pdf
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
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-
incidents/
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-
devops-and-why-the-three-tier-structure-
must-be-replaced-with-swarming-
91e76ba22304
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
This is How to Use ITIL,
DevOps, and SRE Best
Practices
https://www.blameless.com/blog/itil-
devops-sre-work-together
6. SRE & Incident
Response
Management
Incident Response
Training,
PagerDuty Academy
https://response.pagerduty.com/training/c
ourses/incident_response/
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
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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-
sre-on-call/
7. Chaos Engineering
Chaos engineering:
Stress Testing the Cloud
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/c
onsulting/articles/chaos-engineering-stress-
testing-the-cloud-sre-devops-cloud-value-
devops-reliability-risk-management-test-
management.html
7. Chaos Engineering
Disaster Recovery
Testing (DiRT)
Test Template
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nx
YuX62SvKst9YuozJCsBEWU9AltvtV9mgnd-
HbzBrA/edit#heading=h.hpgc9ckwivdb
7. Chaos Engineering
Security Chaos
Engineering
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/securi
ty-chaos-engineering/9781492080350/
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-
principles-and-practice/
7. Chaos Engineering
How to Use Chaos
Engineering to Break
Things Productively
https://www.infoq.com/articles/chaos-
engineering-security-networking/
7. Chaos Engineering
GameDay Case Study
https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2371
297
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
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7. Chaos Engineering
Security and chaos
engineering
https://www.rochestersecurity.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/10/RSS2018-B1.pdf
8. SRE is the Purest
Form of DevOps
SRE Essentials
https://learning.oreilly.com/playlists/7b526
ba0-0ba2-4d89-baac-25e9f3877d7f/
8. SRE is the Purest
Form of DevOps
97 Things Every SRE
Should Know
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/97-
things-every/9781492081487/
8. SRE is the Purest
Form of DevOps
Building an SRE
Organisation
https://www.slideshare.net/FranklinAngulo
1/building-an-sre-organization-
squarespace
8. SRE is the Purest
Form of DevOps
A Day in the Life of a
New SRE
https://blog.newrelic.com/engineering/wh
at-does-an-sre-do/
8. SRE is the Purest
Form of DevOps
The Evolving SRE
Engagement Model
https://sre.google/sre-book/evolving-sre-
engagement-model/
8. SRE is the Purest
Form of DevOps
I’’m SRE and You Can
Too! —A Fine Manual.
https://youtu.be/Cg877bv_xig?t=1027
8. SRE is the Purest
Form of DevOps
I’m an SRE Lead! Now
What? How to Bootstrap
and Organize Your SRE
Team
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbKf
AwPbQgk
8. SRE is the Purest
Form of DevOps
Psychological Safety for
SRE
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/seeki
ng-
sre/9781491978856/ch27.html#psychologic
al_safety_in_sre
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8. SRE is the Purest
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 and Reports
Site Reliability Engineering
https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/toc/index.html
The Site Reliability
Workbook
https://landing.google.com/sre/workbook/toc/
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/site-reliability-
engineering/9781491929117/
SRE Essentials
https://learning.oreilly.com/playlists/7b526ba0-0ba2-4d89-baac-
25e9f3877d7f/
Seeking SRE
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/seeking-
sre/9781491978856/
Building Secure and
Reliable Systems
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/building-secure-
and/9781492083115/
Database Reliability
Engineering
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/database-reliability-
engineering/9781491925935/
Practical Site Reliability
Engineering
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/practical-site-
reliability/9781788839563/
Chaos Engineering
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/chaos-
engineering/9781492043850/
SRE Practitioner Course: Value Added Resources
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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
SRE Practitioner v1.0
Sample Examination
with Answer Key
1. Why are Containers important for modern/distributed architecture?
A. Containers lead to consistent storage of code that keeps applications fresh
B. Containers are the only processes that run on Cloud
C. Containers lead to consistent development and deployment methodologies that
can be iterated easily
D. Containers are the processes that support infrastructure as code
2. How can you secure your Docker containers?
A. Choose third party containers carefully and consider 3
rd
party tools to secure
B. Enable Docker content trust
C. Set resource limit for your containers
D. All of the above
3. Prompted by customer complaints an organization is looking for ways to improve its
major incident management process. Customers complaints include the frequency of
system outages and the lack of communication during outages. A team has identified
several improvement opportunities. Which would address the customers’ concerns?
A. Invest in detection and alerting systems
B. Establish an incident command framework
C. Implement a new incident management system
D. Use swarming to engage multiple people in incident resolution
4. What is the best definition for DNS?
A. The domain name system (DNS) is a decentralized naming system for resources
connected to the internet or a private network
B. Humans cannot feasibly remember IP addresses, so DNS allows the assigning of a
human-readable name, such as google.com, to use in place of the IP address
C. A relational database that has metadata of IPs
D. All of the above
5. What are the 3 most important things to consider when considering Data
architecture?
A. Security, Performance and Network
B. Security, Compliance and Performance
C. Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability
D. Compliance, Reliability and Security
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Sample Exam with Answer Key 2
6. Which type of cloud deployment model reduces the complexity of building, testing,
and deploying applications by keeping the developers inside a well-defined
environment, which limits the ability for the developers to make mistakes?
A. Software as a Service
B. Integration as a Service
C. Infra as a Service
D. Platform as a Service
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 the components that are consumed by
development teams have the necessary governance, controls and standards built-in.
Which approach would achieve this?
A. Adopt a Platform SRE approach
B. Embed SREs with development teams
C. Establish an SRE Center of Excellence
D. Design for security
8. System boundaries help in defining meaningful SLAs. The key points to consider are:
A. Be logical to define a clear capability
B. Base it on domain-based design principles
C. Customer-facing capabilities only
D. Tracking on a system boundary that is large enough than individual system
components
9. What is telemetry?
A. Telemetry is the process of recording the behavior of your systems
B. Telemetry is a widely known Software as a Service (SaaS)tool to plan and execute
DevOps projects
C. Telemetry is a communication tool used by DevOps teams at geographically
distributed locations
D. None of these
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Sample Exam with Answer Key 3
10. What is the error budget for a SLO of 95% on the page served 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. Which of the following practices supports SRE The First Way?
A. Shared On-call Rotation
B. Value Stream Mapping
C. Agile Process
D. Improvement Kata model
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. What are the 2 major tenets of a major incident?
A. Communication and collaboration
B. Resolution and lesson learned
C. Rolling out mitigation and monitoring
D. Identifying cause and resolution
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Sample Exam with Answer Key 4
15. For implementing Service Level Objectives (SLOs), Jane used request-driven services
such as HTTP servers and Application Programming Interface (API) endpoints. She and
the development team decided the SLOs should be against a 2-week sprint cycle and
that the Service Level Indicator (SLI) on both availability and latency should be based
on remote probes sent every minute. This helped drive product resilience because:
A. SLOs and Error Budgets help drive reliability if built correctly
B. Error budgets help with system technical debt
C. SLOs and Error Budgets helped place request-based service with dashboards
D. All of the above
16. If your error budget allows 1% failure of 95% percentile home latency over 5 minutes <
200ms for the past month, what is the Service Level Indicator (SLI) for this home page?
A. 95th percentile of home page latency over 5 mins < 200ms
B. 99% of 95th percentile of home page latency over 5 mins < 200ms for the past
month
C. 99% of home page should be available for 99% of time over 30 days
D. None of the above
17. SREs are deployed at application level, system level, and enterprise level based on the
organizational context. When working at a system level, they participate in the
following activities:
A. Application system design
B. System architecture readiness
C. Engineering center for excellence
D. None of the above
18. Provide a guesstimate for GB bandwidth requirements when using peak at 1.25x times
load. Facts: 200 TB of data per day. (Calculate per second requirements)
A. 31 Gbps
B. 60 Gbps
C. 45 Gbps
D. 10 Gbps
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Sample Exam with Answer Key 5
19. Joe is trying to estimate (on the higher side) the bandwidth requirements at average
load on a metadata size of 8 KB. The assumptions are there are 1 million users who
search 50 times a day and 10 results are yielded per search. What is the average load
in terms of bandwidth per second?
A. 20 MB/sec
B. 50 MB/sec
C. 40 MB/sec
D. 10 MB/sec
20. Non-Abstract Large-Scale Design (NALSD) is a critical skill for SRE because:
A. It provides a way to design upfront, real-world requirements
B. Component isolation, graceful degradation and capacity planning are thought
through well to avoid wastage
C. It is a whiteboard exercise that will translate into concrete estimates that can be
used to build the real systems
D. All of the above
21. The Role of Security in the modern world of connected ecosystems is changing
primarily due to the following:
A. ID based authentication compared to network-based authentication
B. DevSecOps principle shift left security in the development lifecycle
C. Project based engagement to continuous engagement
D. All of the above
22. What is a Microservice?
A. A design used primarily in functional programming and object-oriented
programming
B. A small program that represents discrete logic that executes within a well defined
boundary on dedicated hardware
C. A style of design for enterprise systems based on a loosely coupled component
architecture
D. A very small piece of code that never gets any bigger than 10 lines
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Sample Exam with Answer Key 6
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
24. SRE is expected NOT to “_____” systems, but rather to create environments,
infrastructure and automation that will ________ systems to run meeting SLAs.
A. Run, Self-enable
B. Run, Automate
C. Develop, Self-enable
D. Develop, Automate
25. To start with SRE, “North Star” cannot be achieved immediately. We need to take
small steps. In the “Walking” stage, what probably is a measure?
A. End-to-end build and packaging from CI Server
B. Supports Autonomous Delivery
C. Retrospectives are effective
D. Static Code Analysis and automated unit tests
26. In the Build Stage Participation, SREs get involved in various activities. What activity do
SREs perform in the Continuous Deployment Stage related to Deployment on
Production?
A. Automated Documentation
B. Security Check
C. On-call Support
D. B/G Deployment
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Sample Exam with Answer Key 7
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 the
business hours
C. Chaos Engineering is the discipline of experimenting on a individual system in order
to build confidence in the system
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. What is NOT a myth about Chaos Engineering?
A. Chaos Engineering is about breaking things
B. Chaos Engineering is about injecting random chaos experiments into the system
and see what happens
C. Chaos Engineering is not about injecting random chaos experiments into the system
and seeing what happens
D. Chaos Engineering is only for Cloud
29. True SRE is about remediating issues all across the value chain. Which one below is a
reflection of an SRE’s activity?
A. An architecturally complex system primarily transformed and moved business data
across multiple cloud providers.
B. Poorly implemented Virtual Private Cloud for Production workloads.
C. A single active VPN tunnel was present to connect both the Cloud infrastructures
D. All of the above
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. Establish an incident command framework
B. Redefine the responsibilities of each support tier
C. Use AI/ML to automate as much as possible
D. Develop a communication strategy
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Sample Exam with Answer Key 8
31. What scalability challenges does the Platform SRE approach solve?
A. Fragmentation
B. Unpredictability
C. Cost
D. Options A and B
32. What is the sequence of phases in implementing AIOps?
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 possible SRE Implementation, where does the SRE role fit in?
A. Part of the Development Team
B. Outside the Value Stream
C. SRE Product and Platform Team
D. Operations
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Sample Exam with Answer Key 9
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 in an effort to affect how work is
prioritized and mature the organization. Which behavioral skills are MOST needed in
this situation?
A. Collaboration skills
B. Decision making skills
C. Negotiation and influencing skills
D. Conflict management skills
37. Game Days are done to discover the robustness around degradation of services.
Which one of the below is an example?
A. Stop your docker service
B. DDOS yourself
C. Add delay to your Network and check for Resiliency
D. All of the above
38. In the Game Day Experiment Lifecycle, what is the sequence of activities?
A. Automate, Perform, Verification, Remediate
B. Automate, Perform, Validate, Remediate
C. Perform, Validate, Remediate, Automate
D. Perform, Validate, Automate, Remediate
39. What is the main goal for successful SRE?
A. SLO
B. SLI
C. Error Budget
D. Customer Satisfaction
40. To introduce chaos engineering, a 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 v1.0 Sample Exam with Answer Key 10
SRE Practitioner v1.0 - Sample Exam Answer Key
Question
Correct Answer
Module
1
C
3
2
D
3
3
B
1
4
B
3
5
C
5
6
D
2
7
A
5
8
A
2
9
A
4
10
B
2
11
A
8
12
A
2
13
A
2
14
A
6
15
A
4
16
B
2
17
B
5
18
A
3
19
B
3
20
D
3
21
D
7
22
C
3
23
A
3
24
A
1
25
B
8
26
D
8
27
A
8
28
C
8
29
D
1
30
A
6
31
D
5
32
B
5
33
B
4
34
C
4
35
C
5
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Sample Exam with Answer Key 11
36
C
8
37
D
7
38
C
7
39
D
1
40
B
7
© DevOps Institute SREP v1.0 Sample Exam with Answer Key 12
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