Notes from "What does a 'DevOps Career' look like?"

[Ryan McKay]

http://www.agileaustin.org/2015/07/16/devops-sig-lean-coffee-what-does-a-devops-career-look-like/

Wow, there were 22 people there yesterday!  Blackbaud brought 5, and we all agreed, it was a great discussion.  Thank you very much Dan, Earnest, and BancVue!  Here are the notes I took at my table:

• DevOps != SysOps
• DevOps is an attitude, not a role.  Its about devs and ops having empathy for each other and a willingness to help solve each others problems.  If DevOps is in your title, its probably about facilitating/evangelizing such relationships.
  
• Traditionally devs care only about pre-prod, and Ops only about prod - need everyone to care about entire pipeline
• Its two-way, not just about SysOps becoming more dev-like
• Dev role and Ops role are still distinct.  Finding individuals with deep skills in both areas will be very difficult.  The important thing is to work together to make software delivery better.
• To measure value, identify key metrics for success.
  
• See puppet labs for examples (Jeff mentioned this, I'm gonna ask him to follow up)
• To help spread devops culture
• get everybody to read a book together, so you at least have some shared understanding and terminology
• The Phoenix Project - Easy read, maybe start with this one
• Continuous Delivery - Great, informative book to get everybody on the same page about approach.  Lots of detail though, not a quick read.
• Start with building trust and relationships, not with tools
• Prove that new process can work through metrics, builds confidence

We talked about more than that, but I was taking notes by hand on a post it note :)