The adoption of Industrial DevOps principles is uneven across the value streams of complex systems and the supply chains contributing to regulated, cyber-physical systems at scale. The purpose of Industrial DevOps is to intentionally apply the principles across all functional areas contributing to the system’s design, development, and deployment.

When there is a lack of alignment around shared principles, it inhibits the flow of value. Given that many large-scale cyber-physical systems have critical security and safety requirements, alignment across the value stream is even more important, as these systems provide a critical infrastructure that underpins civilization and our international security.

One of the largest builders of large cyber-physical systems is the US Department of Defense (DoD). In October of 2020, Dr. Will Roper (Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics) wrote a position paper entitled “Take the Red Pill: The New Digital Acquisition Reality,” where he illustrated these needs for the US Air Force.  He explains that DevOps needs to include everything from concept to delivery for cyber-physical systems. This means all safety, regulatory, certification, and quality features are built into the DevOps process, which is now often referred to in the DoD community as Dev*Ops. Due to the safety and security needs of many cyber-physical systems, we integrate Dev*Ops into the Industrial DevOps principles. This paper specifically addresses concerns from the hardware engineering community and provides considerations to support their Industrial DevOps journey.