We presented this year at Scale 17x the value of GitOps for an organization. The goal for operations should be absolute automation. With "Infrastructure as Code" we're able to employ all the best practices of traditional software development to infrastructure and operations- including code reviews and continuous delivery of changes. GitOps is the concept of using Git as the system of record for the desired state of configurations. The ultimate goal is to achieve repeatable processes to apply changes, in the same way, every time. Predictable rollouts let us know ahead of time what’s going to happen (e.g. before you merge). Auditable histories let us see what was done and by whom. Lastly, the process should be accessible to anyone, not just a few technically elite members of the team.

Erik Osterman is the founder of Cloud Posse, a DevOps professional services company that specializes in cloud migrations and release engineering. Previously he was the Director of Cloud Architecture, for CBS Interactive where he led cloud strategy across the organization.