DevOps SOP

What is a DevOps SOP?

A DevOps SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) lays out how teams manage the messy middle ground between development and operations. These procedures touch everything from CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code to automated testing, deployment workflows, monitoring, and what to do when things catch fire at 2 AM. The point is simple: keep deployments predictable, environments consistent, and everyone working from the same playbook no matter who pulled the short straw for on-call duty.

DevOps procedures exist because code doesn't magically teleport itself to production. They spell out how changes move through build pipelines, how infrastructure gets spun up and configured, which checks need to pass before anyone hits deploy, and what the plan looks like when something inevitably breaks. Skip the documentation, and you end up with environments that look nothing alike, deployments that work on Tuesdays but fail on Fridays, and developers and ops folks pointing fingers at each other when customers start complaining.

There's a cultural dimension here too. Good DevOps SOPs clarify ownership, establish feedback loops between teams, and set clear expectations for how communication should work during releases and incidents. When you write these things down instead of assuming everyone just knows, teams tend to collaborate better and ship faster with fewer unpleasant surprises.

Key Characteristics of DevOps SOP

• Automation-First: Manual steps introduce variability, so these procedures lean heavily on automated testing, building, deploying, and monitoring
• Pipeline-Centric: They define how code flows through CI/CD stages from the initial commit all the way to production, including quality gates and approval checkpoints
• Infrastructure as Code: Documentation covers how infrastructure gets provisioned, versioned, and maintained using tools like Terraform, CloudFormation, or Ansible
• Observability Integration: Monitoring, logging, alerting thresholds, and interpreting metrics to spot issues before users do are all part of the picture
• Incident Response: Procedures for handling outages, rolling back deployments, and running post-incident reviews so the same problem doesn't bite you twice. Many teams maintain a dedicated runbook for these scenarios

DevOps SOP Examples

Example 1: CI/CD Pipeline Procedure

A CI/CD SOP documents the complete journey from code commit to production deployment. It covers which tests run at each stage, what code coverage numbers you need to hit, how container images get built and tagged, which staging and testing environments exist, who has authority to approve production deployments, and how to roll things back when a release goes sideways. You'll also find branch protection rules, merge requirements, and special procedures for hotfixes that need to skip the usual queue during emergencies.

Example 2: Infrastructure Provisioning

An infrastructure deployment SOP walks through how teams create and modify cloud resources. Think Terraform or IaC workflows, state file management, keeping staging and production environments reasonably similar, secrets handling, and the review process before infrastructure changes go live. The procedure specifies who can apply changes to which environments and explains how drift detection catches those manual tweaks someone made at midnight and forgot to mention.

DevOps SOP vs IT SOP

Both document technical procedures, but they focus on different operational models. While DevOps SOPs emphasize automation and CI/CD, an IT SOP typically covers traditional system administration and user support.

How Glitter AI Helps with DevOps SOP

Glitter AI takes the pain out of capturing DevOps procedures. Teams record their screens while walking through pipeline configurations, infrastructure deployments, or incident response workflows. Rather than staring at a blank document and trying to remember every step, engineers capture the actual process as they do it, complete with screenshots, terminal output, and notes explaining why each step matters.

The ongoing maintenance problem gets easier too. When pipelines change or new tools get adopted, teams just re-record the relevant sections instead of hunting through pages of text for everything that needs updating. New engineers get visual walkthroughs showing how deployments actually work, not dusty documentation that stopped matching reality three tool migrations ago.