DevOps Cycle or a Misunderstanding of the Role?

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 11:00:00 +0100

Introduction

The term DevOps is frequently used to describe a heterogeneous set of topics: CI/CD, cloud, Kubernetes, security, observability, incident management, cost management, and more. This breadth of meanings creates a recurring confusion: an organization expresses a need for “DevOps” without specifying the expected value, the associated responsibilities, or the target operating model.

The outcome is well known: a succession of urgent periods, followed by automation initiatives, and then a gradual return to the same difficulties. This is often described as the “DevOps cycle.” In many cases, this cycle is not intrinsic to DevOps itself, but rather the indicator of a misunderstanding of the role: DevOps is used as a compensating function (support, firefighting, implicit ownership of production) instead of as a structuring organizational capability.

ADR (Architecture Decision Record): documenting decisions that matter

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 11:00:00 +0100

Engineering teams spend a lot of time discussing, arbitrating, choosing… and then forgetting why they made certain decisions.
The outcome is familiar:

the same debates come back every three months,
decisions get challenged without the original context,
onboarding depends on “the people who know,”
and unnecessary migrations are born from a simple loss of memory.

An ADR (Architecture Decision Record) exists to avoid that. It’s not a “big architecture doc,” nor a requirements spec: it’s a short note that captures an important decision, with just enough context to keep it understandable and reusable.

Engineering on Simple Enough Blog

DevOps Cycle or a Misunderstanding of the Role?

Introduction

ADR (Architecture Decision Record): documenting decisions that matter