DevOps engineering is a team of people tasked with building and maintaining software applications. This includes a wide range of developers, testers, operations engineers, and others who work together to ensure that applications are delivered promptly and meet the needs of their users. While the term DevOps is used to describe individuals and teams, the ideal arrangement is to have at least one dedicated DevOps engineer on staff (although this may not be possible for some companies).
In this article, we’ll look at what it means to be a DevOps engineer, what skills you should have if you want to do it professionally (or semi-professionally), and how to find out if this career path might be right for you before jumping into it headfirst!
What Is DevOps Engineering?
DevOps is a software development process that integrates software developers and information technology (IT) operations professionals to improve workflow between groups. It aims to increase product quality with tools like Docker registry, Ansible, Puppet, etc. while reducing the time to market and the costs of new releases. The name is a portmanteau of “development” and “operations,” signifying its goal to create an environment where building, testing, releasing, and maintaining applications are performed rapidly with high automation levels.
I’ll say it: DevOps engineering is vital for modern businesses because it increases efficiency by automating processes so that you can spend more time developing your product instead of manually deploying it or managing servers. DevOps engineers are in high demand right now—and they’re only going to become more necessary as businesses try more sophisticated automation processes like Continuous Delivery (CD), which automates every stage of software delivery from code check-in through deployment into production environments.
What makes a sound DevOps engineer?
What makes a sound DevOps engineer? It’s all about the ability to work well with others, computers, and tools.
- Working well with others: A sound DevOps engineer needs to work well with others—from developers to business stakeholders—to get buy-in on projects.
- Working well with computers: A sound DevOps engineer must be able to write code efficiently and debug it effectively. They need the ability to look at complex systems from a bird’s eye view for them all to work together seamlessly as one unit rather than several disparate parts that don’t talk nicely together because they’re not designed from scratch by an expert who knows exactly what he/she wants out of them (which is impossible).
- Using tools effectively: A sound DevOps engineer should know how best to utilize various tools available such as Github issue tracking software, JIRA project management tool, etc., so they can prioritize tasks according to urgency level instead of just doing things randomly without any structure whatsoever.
What are the benefits of DevOps?
DevOps is a methodology that helps organizations achieve all of the following:
- Increase productivity by eliminating handoffs and improving communication between development and operations.
- Lower costs by automating manual tasks, improving efficiency, reducing waste, and increasing speed.
- Improve quality through testing automation and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD).
- Rapid releases to production environments improve customer satisfaction with a shorter time to market.
- Improving employee satisfaction with less stressful work schedules gives them more time for family, friends, and hobbies and better career paths within the organization.
- Improving employee retention rate by helping employees feel valued with opportunities for growth in their careers at your company through DevOps practices such as pairing developers with operations engineers
How to Build a DevOps Team at Your Company
If you’re not building a DevOps team, you can still apply the concepts in this article to your team. But if you want to build an authentic DevOps culture, it’s vital that your organization has the right employees with the right skills.
Here are some tips for building that team:
- Start by looking at what skills are needed for your company. How much automation do you want? What kind of automated testing do you need? Do people know how to write code in multiple languages (Python and Ruby on Rails, Java, and C#)? Can they run tests on both Linux and Windows systems? Are they familiar with Docker containers or Kubernetes clusters? All these things are essential when it comes to building out a strong DevOps engineer.
- Look at who is already working on projects within the company who might have some of these essential software development skills already—maybe there’s someone who already knows Ruby but has been focused primarily on frontend work; maybe there’s another person who knows C# but has only worked as an analyst; maybe there’s a former developer who quit because she didn’t feel like writing code anymore — whatever it may be! Make sure everyone gets involved in these discussions so everyone understands where their strengths lie and where gaps exist among current employees’ skill sets – this will help determine which direction(s) future hires should take from there. Once you have a list of potential skills and their associated projects, it’s time to start looking for candidates.
- There are many ways to go about this, but the most important thing is to know what you’re looking for in a candidate. A brief description of what skills each project needs will help filter out candidates who don’t have those skills – and it’s also helpful if you’re trying to recruit someone from outside your company who may not know what they’re getting into.
Conclusion
We hope this article has answered any questions you may have had about DevOps. The field constantly evolves, so check for new information as it becomes available. One thing to remember is that DevOps does not have a single definition that everyone agrees on, which means there’s no singular way of doing things. However, we hope the advice provided here will help you on your journey toward becoming an expert in this exciting field!