DevOps refers to a combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization's ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity. It involves development teams taking on operational responsibilities and operational teams taking on development-like responsibilities. This blurs the lines between traditional IT roles and allows an organization to quickly and reliably improve, deliver, and update products and services. The document discusses how DevOps aims to improve collaboration between development and operations teams through practices like automation, continuous integration and deployment, and self-service tools.