As the global DevOps market is expected to grow to $30 billion by 2028, many companies are looking for engineers with strong technical backgrounds who have expertise in DevOps practices. In this article, we will tell you about the main DevOps roles and the benefits of the emerging DevOps culture behind the overwhelming success of such market leaders as Netflix and Amazon.
These days, a job description for a position of cloud or quality assurance engineer is likely to mention DevOps skills. It is explained by the fact that by embracing DevOps practices, companies can improve their effectiveness and become more agile. Businesses that adopt DevOps report improvement in the performance of their teams and an increase in overall productivity.
To successfully implement these practices, make sure to learn about DevOps team roles and responsibilities. It will help you to learn how to build a highly effective team that fits the scope of your project.
Integrio Systems adopted DevOps practices to assist our clients with creating and maintaining top-level solutions. We provide team extension services to help you get started with DevOps and develop new digital solutions more efficiently.
Key Advantages of Building a DevOps Strategy and Hiring a DevOps Team
DevOps is a process aimed at improving the performance of software development and IT operations teams by facilitating their collaboration and bringing them together to speed up the software development process. A DevOps team includes professionals with experience both in development and operations who work together throughout all the stages of the product development life cycle.
By implementing a DevOps strategy, companies can boost their profits and stand out among their competitors. The DevOps culture is aimed at increasing accountability and responsibility. It makes the most out of the Agile development approach and encourages collaboration between developers and IT operations professionals. Besides, by delineating DevOps roles and responsibilities, team leaders can assign tasks more effectively.
Below, we listed some other advantages of DevOps:
- Continuous deployment and quick updates
- Automated user, system, and integrated testing
- High level of adaptability
- Higher involvement of the team members
- Better accountability and reliability
A typical DevOps team structure may include a security professional, cloud architect, QA engineer, software developer, DevOps engineer, release coordinator, and other professionals. Each company creates teams that suit its budget and needs best.
If you have used Amazon Web Services, keep in mind that the founding company owes its success to DevOps practices. They allow it to manage its infrastructure more efficiently, deploy app code, automate the process of software release, and monitor app performance.
Netflix is another example of a major company implementing DevOps practices. Its DevOps culture helped it to become more innovative, achieve impressive uptime, speed up the release of new features, expand the base of its subscribers, and increase the number of streaming hours.
What Are the Key DevOps Roles?
Before building a DevOps team, make sure to learn more about the main DevOps team roles, as it will help you understand what professionals you need to hire. These days, many companies build small cross-functional teams that include different professionals besides DevOps engineers.
Below, we will quickly outline the roles and responsibilities of DevOps engineer and other professionals you may want to hire.
DevOps Evangelist
Unlike other roles of DevOps professionals, the responsibilities of such a specialist involve promoting the advantages of the DevOps culture within a company. Evangelists are responsible for building DevOps teams and improving business processes.
Automation Architect or DevOps Engineer
This DevOps role is crucial for the effective functioning of a team. Depending on the type of your project, this position may be called a DevOps engineer, Cloud Operations architect, or Integration specialist. It involves finding ways to optimize and speed up the product development cycle.
These professionals have many DevOps duties, including project infrastructure deployment and maintenance, cloud migration, implementation of automation practices, operation monitoring, and IT support.
At Integrio Systems, we offer team extension services for those who are looking for experienced DevOps engineers to move their projects forward.
Software Engineer
A software developer builds, deploys, and monitors new features. Such professionals often assume the responsibilities of QA engineers. Contact Integrio Systems if you want to hire dedicated developers who know everything about DevOps responsibility and practices.
QA Professional
Besides testing new features of the software, such specialists may also have other responsibilities as well. They are mainly focused on improving user experience. Such professionals should also be included in custom .Net development teams.
Product Release Manager
This role is similar to a traditional project manager. Such a specialist should manage DevOps daily tasks, coordinating the release process from development to testing. Product release managers should be able to use agile methodologies and minimize risks.
Product Owner
When building DevOps teams, remember that you need to hire a manager who will establish communication between your clients and the team. For this role of DevOps professional, you should find a person whose soft skills include strong leadership. This professional should know your company well and be able to represent it at the highest level. The PO should be able to create a product roadmap and analyze the progress made by a team.
Main DevOps Responsibilities
Key DevOps team responsibilities cover the experienced creation of an end product aimed at improving the experience of users. Software developers, QA, and operations engineers, as well as other professionals included in such teams, adopt the best DevOps practices. Read on to learn more about various DevOps responsibilities.
Establishing Efficient Architecture
Instead of using a monolithic architecture, DevOps specialists use small components for building large apps. Thus, all the changes can be deployed separately without affecting the usability of an app.
Cloud Migration
Being one of the most important items on the DevOps responsibilities list, this process covers operations with infrastructure, application, and data. DevOps engineers start by building a cloud infrastructure, then proceed with moving the app to the cloud, and finally migrate the data to the cloud. Cloud migration allows you to reduce operational expenses and implement a range of DevOps practices, including CI/CD and monitoring.
Maintaining Continuous Integration/Deployment Pipelines
A CI/CD pipeline includes Continuous Integration (CI) that allows multiple team members to add code to a shared repository. It enables you to automate tasks and minimize integration conflicts. Continuous Delivery (CD) means that the developers automate code deployment, thus reducing the time-to-market. Continuous Deployment allows a team to deploy code as many times as needed and improve it. Thanks to CI/CD pipelines, you can shorten the development time.
Real-Time Monitoring
Using QA automation, teams perform continuous monitoring and track specific KPIs. It increases the effectiveness of deployments.
7 Steps for Building a Highly-Productive DevOps Team
Now that you know more about the roles in DevOps, it’s time to learn how to create a team that makes the most out of DevOps practices. For instance, our professionals know how to deploy and configure Microsoft Azure Active Directory, maintain CI/CD pipelines and perform other DevOps tasks. Below, we have described the main steps that you should follow to build a DevOps team.
Hire the Right DevOps Professionals
Finding the right professionals for your project might be a daunting task, as you need to look for experts in different areas. For instance, your team might include a front-end developer who can build the API and use virtual machines, a QA engineer, a platform engineer, a team lead, a product owner, etc.
As many companies face difficulties with finding the right specialists for their teams, Integrio Systems provides a range of team extension services. Contact our team if you want to find professionals who specialize in various programming frameworks and languages.
Keep Your Team Small
Market leaders employ small teams that consist of 3-4 people. Such teams stand out for their agility and coordinated work that speed up the project’s progress.
Train Your Employees
Make sure to provide your team members with training so that they can master new technologies. You should also provide your team with the right tools for the task and ensure that your employees know how to make the most out of them. You may also rely on a dedicated development center to procure employees with the required level of expertise.
Automate Processes
Besides establishing new processes, you should optimize the existing ones. Using automation, you can improve the development efficiency of your team.
Improve Team Collaboration
The key purpose of DevOps is to optimize the development process to bring a product to the market faster. This is why it’s important to pay attention to the communication practices used by a team. Regular meetings help team members to stay on the same page.
Promote a Sense of Autonomy and Control
To reduce stress, make sure to increase the autonomy of the team members. It will help you minimize the risk of burnout. By learning how to organize themselves, your teams will become more efficient.
Analyze the Effectiveness of Your Team
Pay attention to the deployment frequency, the number of bugs and incompatibility issues, and the security of new features. These metrics will help you understand how to optimize the processes and improve cooperation within the team.
Consider Integrio Your Trusted Partner
With teams of experts based in Canada, Ukraine, and Poland, Integrio Systems provides a full range of product development and maintenance services. The company has been creating innovative solutions for businesses of all sizes for 20 years.
Jonas Software
When working on the project for Jonas Software, Integrio Systems maintained multiple dedicated teams who worked on such projects as NovaPay, 123SignUp, Member Manager, MiGym, and Cubic. Our company helped Jonas to build teams that included professionals with different skill sets and academic backgrounds. As a result, our DevOps engineers started to work with subsidiaries of Jonas to create SaaS solutions for gyms, clubs, fitness centers, etc.
Volo Innovations
Our professionals covered a range of DevOps tasks for Member Solutions. They used DevOps practices to build a SaaS member management app from scratch. We created the Volo app for gyms and fitness centers. The app stands out for its online-based billing, invoicing, and scheduling tools. Using the key DevOps functions, Integrio Systems developed marketing and reporting tools as well as created a member portal.
Reach out to Integrio Systems if you want to build an efficient team of DevOps engineers with years of experience.
