How DevOps can redefine your IT strategy

Excerpts from Rich Hein article Mar 17th

DevOps value

Finding people with this almost magical skillset is difficult. Unfortunately, there isn’t yet a clear career path for talent to follow. “Many DevOps people come up through the infrastructure technology path because of the heavy reliance on scripting and configuration management in DevOps. But then QA analysts well-versed in automation may end up running DevOps as well,” says Angela Yochem, Global CIO at BDP International.

So where should you be looking for talent in the DevOps arena? “It [DevOps talent] typically doesn’t come from IT; my experience is that engineers, working in IT, are a better fit. If they have manufacturing experience where LEAN has been instantiated for some time, it’s even better,” says Michael Henry, senior vice president and CIO at Rovi. This market is a competitive one in regards to talent acquisition. “It’s been easier to grow my talent internally for two reasons: Competition is fierce, and everyone wants to wear the DevOps tag on their resume,” Henry says.

DevOps certifications?

Experts are split on certifications. “DevOps, to me, is more about on-the-job training vs. certifications. Companies want to know that you have ‘been there, done that’,” says Cashman.

Yochem agrees for the most part. “Most of the certifications are still platform/discipline-specific, and many of these are part of the DevOps world. But, overall, no certifications are necessary here.”

There are some certifications out there worth looking into, according to Goli andHenry, although they aren’t the silver bullet you may be looking for. Lean certifications or certifications offered that can express a background in certain technical tools, such as configuration management tools or cloud certifications.

Final thoughts

DevOps isn’t something you can just decide to do. Much like big data, it requires a culture change and a breaking down of the functioning silos within the IT organization. It needs to start at the top. The end-game is to have your development and operations team working in a collaborative fashion toward the collective goal of continuous delivery of better software.