A Brutally Honest Guide to Building a DevOps Team

Let’s be honest: the path toward an effective DevOps team is often littered with failed initiatives, misaligned strategies, and culture clashes. So, how do you build a DevOps team that actually works?

Here’s a brutally honest guide to creating a DevOps team that doesn’t just survive, but thrives.

Start with a Culture Shift

DevOps isn’t a tool or a job title. It’s a culture. If you think you can sprinkle some Jenkins on your team and call it a day, you’re in for a rude awakening. DevOps is about tearing down the silos that have kept devs and ops at each other’s throats for decades. It’s about shared responsibilities and blurring the lines between roles.

The first step? Change the way your team thinks. The “not my problem” mentality needs to go out the window. Every person on your team should be responsible for the success of the product, from the first line of code to the final deployment.

Hire for Mindset, Not Just Skills

I love a good CV as much as the next person. But a team of rockstar developers with egos the size of Jupiter won’t get you anywhere. When building a DevOps team, hire for mindset and culture fit.

You need people who:

1. Embrace change: The only constant in DevOps is change. Your team should be comfortable adapting to new tools, processes, and ideas.

2. Collaborate like champs: No lone wolves, please. You need people who love to share knowledge and work together to solve problems.

3. Think end-to-end: DevOps is all about ownership. Your team should care about the product from ideation to production.

4. Love to learn: The DevOps landscape evolves faster than you can say "Kubernetes." Your team must be committed to continuous learning.

Invest in the Right Tools

While culture is the foundation, tools are the enablers. But beware: not all tools are created equal, and throwing every shiny new thing into your toolchain is a recipe for disaster.

Choose tools that:

• Facilitate collaboration: Think Slack, Jira, and Confluence.

• Automate the boring stuff: CI/CD pipelines, testing, and infrastructure as code. Automate everything that can be automated.

• Scale with you: As your team grows, your tools should too. Kubernetes, Terraform, and Docker are great for scalable infrastructure management.

• Are widely adopted: Avoid niche tools that lack community support or integration with other key components of your stack.

Build a Blameless Environment

Mistakes happen. Systems crash. Deployments go sideways. The worst thing you can do is point fingers and assign blame. Instead, focus on learning from failures and improving your processes.

Create a culture where:

• Failures are celebrated: Yes, you heard me right. Use failures as opportunities to learn and improve.

• Post-mortems are routine: Conduct blameless post-mortems to identify root causes and prevent recurrence.

• Open communication is key: Encourage your team to speak up about issues, challenges, and ideas without fear of repercussions.

Continuous Improvement

DevOps is a journey, not a destination. Your team should always be looking for ways to improve processes, tools, and skills.

Promote continuous improvement by:

• Setting clear goals: Align your DevOps strategy with the overall business objectives.

• Measuring success: Use metrics like deployment frequency, lead time, and mean time to recovery to track progress.

• Iterating and refining: Regularly review your processes and make adjustments as needed.

Train, Train, Train

The DevOps landscape is ever-changing. If your team isn’t keeping up, you’re already falling behind.

Invest in training by:

• Providing access to online courses and certifications: Sponsor your team’s continuing development through online courses on platforms like Coursera, and certifications in AWS, Azure, Terraform, etc.

• Encouraging conference attendance: Events are great for networking and learning the latest trends.

• Organising internal workshops: Share knowledge within the team and encourage peer-to-peer learning.

Final Thoughts

Building a DevOps team is not for the faint-hearted. It requires a cultural shift, the right people, the best tools, and a commitment to continuous improvement. But if you get it right, the rewards are worth the effort: faster delivery cycles, fewer bottlenecks, and a team that can weather any storm.

So, roll up your sleeves and start building a DevOps team that’s not just ready for the future, but shaping it.