Understanding Three Ways

The seminal work "The DevOps Handbook" (authored by Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, and John Willis) articulates these foundational principles as the Three Ways of DevOps. Rather than prescriptive steps or tactical checklists, these principles serve as philosophical lenses through which we can understand why certain practices—from continuous integration to infrastructure as code—enable teams to operate with greater speed, safety, and resilience.

The Three Ways comprise:

• The First Way: Flow — Optimizing the rapid delivery of value from concept to customer
• The Second Way: Feedback — Establishing rapid feedback loops to identify and remediate issues at their source
• The Third Way: Learning & Experimentation — Fostering a culture of continuous improvement through systematic learning

In this series of concise, practical articles—each designed to be digested in under five minutes—we'll explore these core principles in depth. Our objective is straightforward: to illuminate why DevOps works and demonstrate how these foundational concepts can be applied to transform your daily engineering practices.