DevOps Engineers Do Not Exist

#devops

As a DevOps researcher and advocate, I see a lot of views within IT organizations that are not guided by academic research. Instead, some organizations have embraced buzzwords and interpreted them as they will. The spontaneous nature of how some organizations portray DevOps hinders the advancement of DevOps methodologies and research. In this post, I explain what DevOps is, why it cannot be engineered, and how we, as DevOps leaders, can help improve the state of DevOps. 

So what is DevOps, and why is it not possible to engineer? DevOps is a collection of processes and methodologies for solution development and delivery. The definition is undisputed; however, the role of culture is debated among academic researchers. In my research, I have found that acknowledging cultures, such as no-blame culture and participative leadership, leads to more adaptive implementation plans, greater stakeholder support, and greater team cohesion. But why is it impossible to be a DevOps engineer? DevOps cannot be engineered; it is merely a set of practices to follow and guidelines to observe. It is a suggestion and not tangible on its own. DevOps strategies are used to implement a specific solution. That solution may be a cloud application that needs a cloud-specific infrastructure. In that case, you would have software engineers, site reliability engineers, managers, security engineers, cloud administrators, etc. In fact, DevOps is a combination of the words Development and Operations. This means that engineers, system administrators, and everyone in their chain of command partner up to deliver and manage a solution.

Where does the idea of a DevOps engineer come from? This is a tough question, but in my academic research, I have observed these titles within organizations that believe automation is DevOps. Automation can be a part of a DevOps strategy. You may have software engineers that also develop the CI/CD pipeline. The CI/CD pipeline does not constitute the idea of DevOps on its own. Instead, some organizations label individuals who develop software, manage the CI/CD pipeline, and have system administration experience as DevOps engineers. I have interviewed several people with the title of DevOps engineer, and the one theme that repeated itself was that they felt they were completing three jobs with a single-job salary. 

Now the big question is, how can we improve the state of DevOps? From my perspective as a researcher, the critical path toward advancing DevOps contains two objectives; getting more academic researchers involved in DevOps research and planning efforts and educating stakeholders and upper-echelon management on DevOps strategic planning. What tech organizations are experiencing when transitioning to DevOps is similar to organizations that went from Waterfall to Agile. Both scenarios require technical, procedural, and cultural changes within the organizations to ensure success. The decision-makers need all the data they can get to support the teams they manage. It is critically important that teams get stakeholder support for a project to have the greatest chance of success. So, if you are a decision-maker, I implore you to communicate with members of your organization at all levels to understand the mission they are trying to accomplish, the resources they will need, and to draw on experiences they may already have. DevOps can promote collaborative cultures and standardize solutions, but it will take more than giving a person the title DevOps engineer and hoping for the best.