DevOps-Foundation Questions and Answers

Lean tools and practicesare foundational to DevOps because they help organizations systematically identify and eliminate waste, optimize value delivery, and continuously improve processes.

Lean thinkingfocuses on value stream mapping, reducing delays, bottlenecks, over-processing, handoffs, rework, and unnecessary tasks—core to making DevOps successful.

Option D, “They help identify waste and assist in the creation of improvement practices,” perfectly captures this focus.

Extract-style reference:

“Lean enables teams to identify value and non-value-added activities and to use continuous improvement techniques such as Kaizen, value stream mapping, and removing waste.”

—DevOps Handbook

PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6: Lean tools like Value Stream Mapping, 5S, and Kaizen are cited as critical enablers for optimizing the flow and improving IT and business alignment.

ChatOpsis the DevOps practice of using chat platforms (like Slack, Teams, Mattermost) as the central interface for communication, collaboration, and even automated deployment or support tasks.

It encourages “conversation-driven development, delivery, and support,” making processes transparent and collaborative.

Second Way(A) is about feedback loops, but not specifically conversational platforms.

Communication Platforms(C) is a generic term.

VisOps(D) is not a standard DevOps term.

Extract-style reference:

“ChatOps is a collaboration model that connects people, tools, process, and automation into a transparent workflow. Teams communicate and execute commands from a central chat client.”

—DevOps Handbook

PeopleCert Foundation v3.6: ChatOps promotes rapid feedback and a culture of sharing.

When Kanban teams feel overwhelmed and nothing is getting finished, it’s a sign thattoo much work is in progress(WIP).

Work in Progress (WIP) limitsare a key Kanban and Lean practice: they restrict how many tasks can be active at one time, forcing teams to focus, finish, and deliver before starting new work.

Pushing more work(A) oradding more resources(B) worsens the problem.

Unblocking work(D) is helpful, but the core issue isoverload.

Extract-style reference:

“WIP limits encourage teams to finish work before starting new tasks, reducing context switching and enabling better flow and faster delivery.”

—Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business, David J. Anderson

PeopleCert DevOps Foundation: Limiting WIP is essential for effective flow and sustainable pace.

Deployment frequencyis not aculture metric.

It’s aprocessmetric, indicating how often code is released.

Culture metricsfocus on engagement, morale, retention, psychological safety, and NPS.

Why not the others?

Employee NPS:Measures employee satisfaction and willingness to recommend.

Engagement/morale:Direct indicators of cultural health.

Retention:How well an org keeps talented people, reflecting culture.

Extract-style reference:

“Measuring DevOps culture relies on employee engagement, morale, and retention, not on delivery metrics like deployment frequency.”

—State of DevOps Report

PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6:Culture metrics focus on people, not just process.

Continuous Delivery’s primary benefit is that itreduces the cost, time, and risk of delivering incremental changes. By keeping software deployable at all times, teams can ship small, low-risk releases as needed.

A:Prioritizing features over deployability increases risk.

B:Not all releases are deployed immediately; CD keeps themready.

D:CD doesn’t automate everything—some manual steps may remain, especially in Continuous Delivery (vs. Continuous Deployment).

Extract-style reference:

“Continuous Delivery reduces deployment pain by ensuring that code is always in a deployable state, decreasing the cost, time, and risk associated with releases.”

—Continuous Delivery, Jez Humble & David Farley

PeopleCert Syllabus: Highlights CD as a strategy for safer, more efficient business change.

When developers practice agile but operations is slow to deploy, it means IT Operations have not kept pace—classic “left behind” scenario. DevOps aims to align development and operations, breaking down barriers and enabling faster, safer, and more frequent deployments. DevOps is not only about development (B is incorrect), does not break cadence but instead aligns it (C is incorrect), and is not the same as agile but complements it (D is incorrect).

TheDeming Cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act)is foundational to continuous improvement in Lean, and is specifically applied in theImprovement Katapractice:

Improvement Kata: A structured routine for continuous, incremental improvement based on scientific thinking (PDCA).

Value Stream Mapping and Andon cord are Lean practices, but they don’t directly reference PDCA as the core mechanism.

Extract-style reference:

“The Improvement Kata incorporates the Deming cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) to drive small, rapid cycles of change, helping teams to experiment, learn, and adjust.”

—Toyota Kata, Mike Rother

PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6: Cites PDCA as integral to continuous improvement and Lean/DevOps adoption.