The usual pipeline looks something like this:

Dev -> QA -> Ops

or

Idea -> Design -> Build -> Test -> Deploy -> Maintain

For example, Infrastructure Operations used to be responsible for providing a Test environment, now developers can test without Ops because tools like GitLab automatically provision test environments on demand (and then destroy them when they are no longer needed). You still need Ops to take care of that CI system, but you don't need as many personnel.