DevOps, engineers and the community

Working with DevOps is nothing like the classic waterfall development: processes and tools are entirely different, and so it is evident that it needs to be realized by different engineers. But some companies try to introduce DevOps by simply calling their system administrators DevOps engineers. What is that creature, they do not know. Every company invents their own version of DevOps engineer. Meanwhile, DevOps engineering practices require from engineers new skills, new way of thinking, new competencies — something that is usually called "culture" with some religious touch. But culture is always a set of skills and rules, without which nothing can be done.

In this talk we are going to discuss which roles are there in DevOps and how they can interact, which skills and practices the engineers have to learn for the DevOps process to work, and what could happen when they don't. Skills can be learned, they can be spread through communities — and this is where lies the importance of the communuties, not just in cool pastime. The community is the key to culture spreading.