Uncovering the DevOps Landscape: A Scoping Review and Conceptualization Framework
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The rapid proliferation of DevOps variants, collectively known as XOps, reflects the growing complexity and specialization within software development and operations. However, the diversity of these practices has led to inconsistencies and confusion, which complicates the development and standardization of the field. While there has been significant research on individual XOps, there is a lack of systematic, horizontal analysis across all XOps practices. This paper addresses this gap by conducting a scoping review of XOps literature, focusing on three fundamental research questions: the definition and categorization of XOps, the methodologies used to study their adoption, and the common challenges identified in their implementation. As the first study to systematically address these questions, we propose the XOps conceptualization framework, offering a structured approach to understanding and studying XOps. This framework serves as an initial step toward bringing clarity to the DevOps landscape, providing guidance in uncovering its complexities and laying the foundation for future research and the emergence of new XOps.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.119 | 0.181 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.086 | 0.060 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".