Is DevOps for designers?

We think rightly so. One of the foundations of DevOps is that cross-functional teams deliver better products faster. If that is the case, then why keep their collaboration platforms separated, why make their work flows independent and disconnected, why hand off deliverables when it should be all about constant iteration with handovers?

Figma founder, Dylan Field, crunched some numbers that prove this point and found out that the designers:developer ratio had increased considerably among top players

https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/31/here-are-some-reasons-behind-techs-design-shortage/

And we are not talking here about adaptable, flexible startups. Quite the contrary. To quote Dylan:

The companies willing to go on the record were mostly enterprise, so this sample doesn’t even include the consumer startups that famously focus on design, like Airbnb. Facebook staffers told us the social network has quadrupled its designer hiring target in the last two years alone — but Facebook wouldn’t officially comment.

At GitLab, in line with DevOps learnings, we believe that frictionless feedback loops are the best way to validate one’s work. Giving designers the ability to work hand in hand with the developers that will create the source code that will later give life to their visuals is making that feedback loop the fastest in our opinion.

It is not only about speed though. GitLab aspires to be a comprehensive and versatile collaboration platform at all levels. It should make our users able to perform laser-focused code reviews at the line level or comments at the pixel level. At the same time, being able to discuss in an orderly fashion the big picture would provide that scope of collaboration that software development requires: fast incremental iterations that integrate in a product or service deployed in multiple environments. The ability to improve software adoption and engagement everywhere anywhere in the Cloud by deploying well-informed, minuscular and cooperative changes at the team level.

DevOps vs DesignOps

There are many definitions of DevOps of which a simplification that most would agree with is the holistic view of software development and operations in a virtuous cycle of versioning, incremental releasing and short feedback loops. This approach, in general has proven successful to many of the software giants that deliver software used by millions with consistent levels of reliability.

#devops