DevOps is a set of practices intended to reduce the time between committing a change to a system and deploying it to production while ensuring high quality. It focuses on bridging the gap between developers and operations teams. Key DevOps principles include systems thinking, amplifying feedback loops, and a culture of experimentation. DevOps aims to achieve continuous delivery through practices like automated deployments, infrastructure as code, and deployment strategies like blue-green deployments and rolling upgrades.