Continuous practices and devops: beyond the buzz, what does it all mean?

DevOps and continuous practices are attracting steadily growing attention by both practitioners and researchers in the software engineering community. The terms are often used inconsistently, interchangeably and with unclear meaning, however. Taking the position that this ambiguity and miscommunication renders the community great harm, in that it impedes our ability to critically appraise these practices, their effects and interplay between them, we analyze how published literature on both continuous practices and DevOps treat the terms. Based on this analysis, along with statements by often cited sources in the community as well as personal experience from researching and practicing these concepts, we propose guidelines to help authors reduce ambiguity in their publications. Additionally, definitions designed to reflect mainstream interpretation while disentangling the terms from one another are presented.