There is such thing as a

DEVOPS ENGINEER

Created by Mick Pollard / @aussielunix

You use:

Ansible

OR

Puppet

OR

Chef

OR

Packer

OR

Terraform

OR

Vagrant

OR

Jenkins

OR

CircleCI

You write:

Tests

You write:

Code

in ruby

or python

You understand CI/CD

You go to conferences

You use (or build) the cloud

You are a DEVOPS ENGINEER

Nope Nope Nope

It just means you are a really good sysadmin or programmer

Or an INFRASTRUCTURE CODER

BUT

There can be such thing as a DEVOPS ENGINEER.

First, a little story.

A few years ago Innotech only had one IT team and it was very easy to keep abreast of all things that were happening.

Wind forward some time and Innotech split out the IT team into Ops, Infrastructure, Support, Networking, R&D and Pre-Sales.

With this came some challenges

Innotech found they now had two teams working on the same thing due to a lack of visibility.

How do you stay informed about what is happening in other silos?

It was decided to bring in some consultants

Meet the THE DEVOPS BOBS

The DEVOPS BOBS observed for a while, interviewed various staff and then put together a presentation on observations and suggestions for improvements.

This is what I call an DEVOPS ENGINEER CONSULTANT.

Someone that can help a company lower the walls between each silo so they can be aware of each other and what is happening.

How to be better communicators.

How to have empathy for others in the business.

How to recognise when a change will affect other silos and to know to engage them early about the upcoming changes

Another little story.

This is one of the examples that the DEVOPS BOBS pointed out that could have been done better.

Lumbergh calls a Sales Team Meeting and decides it is time for Innotech to split the Sales Team into separate regional Sales Teams.

• Northern Region
• South Region
• Rest of the World Region

Everyone leaves the meeting and carries on with their day.

Smykowski logs into the company CRM and finds out that it is not capable of handling regional Sales Teams

He lets Lumbergh know of the impending doom

We are screwed.....

Lumbergh heads over to the CRM team

um, yeh, I am going to need you to drop everyting and add regional sales team support to the CRM

oh and yeh, I am going to need you to come into work on Saturday to finish that off.

This is not the devops way.

Let's try that again but with a better outcome

At a sales team meeting, it is concluded that the team needs to plan for dividing the team up into separate sales regions.

Smykowski speculates that he thinks the CRM may not support regional sales teams

After the meeting, Smykowski goes and talks to Samir(CRM Developer) to discuss CRM capabilities

Smykowski learns that some CRM development will be required and that it would take approximately a week.

Smykowski raises a feature request ticket for the CRM team and let's the Sales team know.

The Sales team and CRM team work together to get the new feature developed and a cutover release time that suits the Sales Team

The sales team and the CRM team celebrate a smooth transition.

To recap:

People who use Automaiton, CI/CD, configuration management and coding are not devops or 'doing devops'

They are good sysadmins, good developers or infrastructure coders.

Devops is about getting the silos(teams) working together more effectively to bring better bussiness value

And finally

A devops engineer is someone that helps guide you on your devops journey.