Versioning Strategy for DevOps Implementations

DevOps is one of the most popular approaches for software delivery nowadays. Even though there is no unified definition of DevOps, there is wide consensus about the set of practices that are part of it. Two of those practices are Infrastructure as Code and Continuous Delivery, which bring new artifacts into the Software Development lifecycle. These new artifacts have direct impact on Software Configuration Management, which is a well-known practice that has been around for decades in the Software Engineering discipline. In particular, these new practices have a direct impact on Version Control. This article describes a Version Control Strategy to manage these new artifacts introduced by DevOps initiatives. The proposed strategy covers the identification of artifacts, versioning tools, version naming conventions and traceability between different artifacts versions. The strategy was validated in three cases of real world projects where it was successfully applied. Each case corresponds to a different kind of organization and in each case a different set of tools where used. Based on these cases, benefits and possible improvements are identified.