Category: Tech

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Yeah it’s that time again, time to find out why being that hotshot lone ranger could do you more harm than good. You’ve been tasked with working on the creation of an application, and it has to reach the market as quickly as possible.

However, since it’s just you and you’re only one person, being able to launch is going to take a tall order chunk of time. You find this situation would be better suited if you were to have a team…I know what you’re thinking and no I wasn’t trying to make an A-Team reference, the words just landed in such a way.

Anyway, you’re pondering if you should gather a team to work on the creation of this wonderful, ground-breaking application. How would you feel if I told you that like finding anything you need on the internet, there’s an app for that?

Well not an actual app per se to build the team, but then again there’s an app for Indeed that kind of works like what we’re talking about- you know what, never mind, just know in order to build this team you’re going to need Indeed.

Developers Before Ops

So in the land before trying new ideas was a thing, when applications and such were in development there would be a team of developers and a team of operations.

The developers would go through several steps in creating an application, these steps were to plan, code, build, and test. On the other side, operations’ primary function was to test what the developers had made and provide feedback on what worked and what didn’t.

Operations steps were to deploy, operate, and monitor. An issue with working in this fashion was, when the developers were done and handed off to operations, many if not all of them took on other projects and by the time operations returned with their feedback for the developers to work on…they were, well for lack of better words, gone. Sounds bad? It was.

What was the solution to this problem? Well it’s the team we were talking about earlier. You didn’t read that part? Shame on you, go back up and read your line.

The name of the team is called DevOps, this is just a combination of the two… real creative I know. DevOps aims to shorten the development life cycle and provide rapid delivery with high software quality.

DevOps is complementary to Agile software development, actually, several aspects of DevOps came from the Agile way of working. I can see you with your hand raised. Z-daddy, what is Agile? Worry not child of mine, Z-daddy has you covered.

Agile is an iterative approach to project management and development that deliver value to their customers faster. There’s more to it than that but explaining would take over this script.

Just know the combination of developers and operations working in tandem speeds up the process and there are fewer headaches to deal with.

Fathering DevOps

Who in their right mind would think to adopt this crazy outside-of-the-box format way of working?

Many large-name companies like; Amazon, Target, Nordstrom, Netflix, and Walmart have made the switch to DevOps and have seen a decent return in doing so. The DevOps model relies on effective tooling to help teams rapidly and reliably deploy and innovate.

So like with Netflix, when they adopted the DevOps model, they created a tool called “Simian Army” which created bugs in their systems on purpose to motivate developers to create kind of a “be prepared for anything” type of situation, so you could Netflix and become or find out you’re a baby’s daddy without having to worry about your service ever going out…which is kind of chill.

Keys and Goals

What’s that? “This is madness,” you say. “Other things that make DevOps so important are that it emphasizes team empowerment, cross-team communication and collaboration, and technology automation.

All of this is supposed to nullify what happened back in the old days of development, I only say “supposed” because not sure if you have ever worked for a large company or not but if you have, you will know that communication is, for lack of better terms non-existent.

Again, I know that every company is different or at least they try to be but, in my experience, dear sweet Satan it’s been bad. Anyway, DevOps at its core, the ultimate goal is to enable the organization to deliver continuous value to its customers.

At the end of the day, the aim is for the customer to be happy with the product and use it worry-free.

Degrees of Daddy Issues

So, have you been feeling peer pressure of returning to school to get a degree? Your daddy has been telling you to “either get a degree in something or get out”?

Well…I have good news and bad news. The good news first is, like always, Z-daddy got you and would never kick you out…unless you broke in then you would have to leave.

The bad news, however, is that you may have to leave if you don’t want to spend time in college because you don’t have to in order to get into DevOps… or many other fields. I don’t know why we’re still harping on the four or how many ever years in college troupe.

Education is, for the most part, free nowadays, going to a college is like going to a restaurant, depending on which one you attend you’re really just going because of the name. Sorry for the monologue, back to the script.

DevOps attracts people with technical and non-technical backgrounds, meaning you can be an intern who fetches coffee, refills, and beats on printers, and still, find your way to DevOps.

Alternate resources are doing some online courses or a coding Bootcamp. Gaining extensive knowledge of the Software Development Life Cycle or SDCL, automation tools, and processes to resolve complex operational problems would see you well.

Made it this far and found this to be entertaining? Then a big thanks to you and please show your support by cracking a like, scripting a comment, or plug-in to follow.

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Do you have an interest in joining a DevOps team?

Script a comment below about what company you would dev for.