I'll write bad code. I know it will happen. I'll produce a bad query, incorrect logic, or the wrong data transformation being returned.

This won't be a malicious act. It might be because of ignorance, or perhaps just a simple mistake. My code might be the result of short-sightedness or not accounting for a potential situation. I might even misinterpret poorly written specifications and place the blame on others. Maybe I'll misread the code and won't realize there's a problem.

And, for sure, this code will get deployed to production.

At some point I know this will happen, to me or someone else. And for whatever reason, I need to account for that fact in my software development process. I can't prevent mistakes, as decades of software development have proven. Despite my best efforts, code reviews, the tests implemented in QA and elsewhere, bad code is going to get deployed.

The important thing in any software development project is how you handle the mistakes. How do you move forward, and certainly, how do you apply a patch? Can you do it quick enough to minimize the impact to clients? Or must they deal with the issues, developing the workaround or missing functionality for a significant portion of time? Or will they consider abandoning your software for some other vendor?

One of the reasons I continue to advocate for a DevOps approach is that a known process can enable you to fix your mistakes in a timely manner. With a consistent approach to writing, testing, and deploying software, you can apply a patch when it is needed. Certainly the code needs to be logically fixed, but a reliable process will help ease all the overhead of getting your code to a production system.

DevOps can be implemented many ways, and if applied in name only, things won't improve. We can't say we're using DevOps, or we're coding faster, or we release every week. We need to really implement the three ways. However, if you approach your project and staff with the idea that although things are flawed, they can be improved and made better, you'll find that you can deliver those fixes for clients in an extremely timely manner with a minimum of risk.

DevOps allows us to move faster, but that's not the goal. The goal is that we improve things and have confidence that we can release when we want to, in a repeatable, reliable, less risky fashion.