The purpose of this standard is to specify required practices for operations, development, and other key stakeholders to collaborate and communicate to deploy systems and applications in a secure and reliable way. This document provides a defined set of processes and methods to facilitate DevOps principles and practices, including improved communication between stakeholders throughout the systems life cycle, not just during development and operations. This document is written for DevOps stakeholders, which includes, but is not limited to, acquirers, suppliers, developers, integrators, operators, maintainers, managers, quality assurance managers, compliance managers, auditors, and users of software systems, products, and services. It can be used by a single organization in a self-imposed mode or in a multi-party situation. Parties can be from the same organization or from different organizations, and the situation can range from an informal agreement to a formal contract. The processes in this document can be used as a basis for implementing DevOps while establishing organizational environments, e.g., methods, procedures, techniques, tools, and trained personnel. The processes in this document provide guidance on the use of DevOps principles and practices for processes used by an organization to construct software life cycle models appropriate to its products and services. An organization, depending on its purpose, can select and apply an appropriate subset to fulfill that purpose. This document can be used in one or more of the following modes: a) By an organization--to establish DevOps principles and practices in support of an environment of desired processes. These processes can be supported by an infrastructure of methods, procedures, techniques, tools, and trained personnel. The organization may then employ this environment to perform and manage its projects and progress software systems through their life cycle stages. In this mode, this document is used to assess conformance of a declared, established environment to its provisions. b) By a project--to establish DevOps principles and practices to help select, structure, and employ the elements of an established environment to provide products and services. In this mode, this document is used in the assessment of conformance of the project to the declared and established environment. c) By an acquirer and a supplier--to establish DevOps principles and practices to help develop an agreement concerning processes and activities. Via the agreement, the processes and activities in this document are selected, negotiated, agreed to, and performed. The acquirer and supplier can be part of the same organization or separate organizations. d) By process assessors--to establish DevOps principles and practices in a process reference model for use in the performance of process assessments that may be used to support organizational process improvement.