GitOps builds on the tools and processes developers already know - Git, pull requests, versioning, and code review - extending them so that infrastructure and deployment flows are versioned and automated. It covers not only application code but also how the system is defined, deployed, and maintained.

In practice, GitOps means you keep a Git repository that declares the desired state for your infrastructure and/or application (for example Kubernetes manifests, Helm charts, or Terraform files), and an automated mechanism continuously ensures the actual state matches that declaration. Changing the repo and triggering a merge/pull request starts the chain from review to automated deployment.

This provides benefits like traceability (all changes go through Git), straightforward rollbacks (often a Git revert), improved consistency between environments, and better collaboration between dev and ops teams.

However, GitOps also requires discipline and the right tools. Since much of your infrastructure becomes versioned code and automation, you need to handle secrets securely, manage differences between environments (dev/staging/prod), and avoid overly heavy processes. In short: if you want your infrastructure to be changeable as code, versioned, automatically deployed, and visible to the whole team, GitOps is a compelling approach to explore.