Integration of DevOps into a Quality Management System as per ISO 9001

Abstract

Today’s rapidly changing environment, especially in the IT sector, makes the use of agile and adaptable organizational approaches crucial. DevOps helps organizations to achieve that. Furthermore, the relevance of standards such as the ISO 9001:2015 gain more importance for customers, to ensure that delivered products and services fulfill the required quality requirements. Therefore, ISO 9001:2015 and DevOps gain importance for IT organizations, especially when acquiring new customers and keeping up with the rapidly changing environment they work in. Considering that establishing or enrolling a quality management system, according to ISO 9001:2015, often requires costly investments for organizations, it would make sense to include such a system in a DevOps lead organization, with little to no adaptions if possible. Proving this statement was done by conducting a comparison between the ISO 9001:2015 requirements and the available DevOps practices. To check the possibility of integrating or even combining DevOps and the ISO 9001:2015 standard, this thesis provides a theoretical framework for organizations to evaluate similarities and differences between the standard and DevOps. Starting with a theoretical introduction to the standard and the associated requirements for quality management systems. Additionally, a basic introduction to the principles and fundamentals of the standard is provided. This is followed by an explanation of the DevOps philosophy and its meaning for IT organizations as well as the challenges it brings when established in such. Furthermore, the foundations and lifecycle of DevOps are explained. Following this, DevOps is checked for conformity and deviations from the ISO 9001:2015 requirements. Hereby the first step was to understand the requirements of the individual standard points and to interpret them in the context of an organization whose core competence is the development and operation of software. Followed by the formulation of a statement that reflects the requirements of ISO 9001:2015. As a result, approaches for organizations could then be searched in literature, to analyze them for conformity resulting in a summarizing and discussion of the comparison outcome. Hereby the comparison has shown that DevOps overall fulfills the ISO 9001:2015 requirements for a quality management system. The only exception to this is the specific requirements for the type and form of documentation in some standard points and dedicated practices for internal audits as well as management reviews. However, these can be met by simply expanding the already documented information and existing internal assessments. It also shows that both systems pursue the same goals, customer satisfaction and constant improvement. As a result, the thesis shows that organizations with an implemented and functioning DevOps philosophy can be certified according to the ISO 9001:2015 standard with small adaptations.

Date of Award	2024
Original language	English
Supervisor	Harald Dobernig (Supervisor)