What is a Devops Leader?
A DevOps Leader is a transformational leader, leading people through a cultural transformation.
He/She focuses on creating a digital transformation, applying new techniques that have been proven by enterprise organizations. Organization’s profitability and productivity depend on the team capability to develop products, the good DevOps Leader enhances this capability.
The role of the DevOps Leader
DevOps Leader’s main responsibility is to build a great team and great technology. He/she is an enabler, a supporter, a leader that provides the foundation for a culture in which every member of a team learns every day and experiments every day.
This person is the professional responsibility to enable the necessary practices that correlate with high performance, and it also supports effective communication and collaboration between team members in pursuit of organizational goals.
The Responsibilities of the DevOps Leader
The DevOps Leader’s common responsibilities are:
- Oversee and guides all activities of the DevOps teams.
- Establish cultural norms.
- Promote improvement in the professional skills of the DevOps team.
- Support team experimentation.
- Promote, document, and implement technologies and processes that enhance developer productivity.
- Enhance communication/interaction between Developer and operations.
- Inspire and motivate.
The Competencies of the DevOps Leader
DevOps Leaders have typically 3 competencies:
- Inspirational Communication.
- This is the capability of a DevOps Leader to share an appealing vision that inspires and motivates the DevOps team to perform beyond expectations.
The Leader encourages people to see the change as an opportunity.
- This is the capability of a DevOps Leader to share an appealing vision that inspires and motivates the DevOps team to perform beyond expectations.
- Intellectual stimulation.
- Capability to challenge a team to ask new questions, challenge assumptions, take risks and generate ideas.
- Personal recognition.
- Focus on the individual needs, acknowledge better performance and personally compliments for developments and achievements.
Latest DevOps Trends
The number of organizations which are using DevOps is increasing together with the spreading of frameworks and best practices like Agile and ITIL.
The key trends in DevOps and their impact on the profession of the DevOps Individuals are:
- “must-have” skills: automation skills, process, skills;
- “nice-to-have” skills: testing and enterprise/business architecture skills.
Source: 2019 upskilling: Enterprise DevOps Skills Report and 2017 state of the DevOps report.