9 Resources to Help You Thrive in Your DevOps Role

From implementing new software, increasing release velocity, or improving CI/CD processes, DevOps principles and practices continue to inform the digital transformation initiatives at leading enterprise organizations. “In 2020, we will see organizations [continue to] embrace DevOps practices at all levels,” says Tom Iverson, managing principal, cloud and DevOps at RBA.

DevOps cultivates a culture of continuous improvement, but it requires a commitment to continuous learning as well. The wealth of DevOps resources available on the web can be overwhelming. We’ve rounded up the following DevOps resources to follow for best practices, latest trends, and inspirational solutions to common problems.

1. The Agile Admin

The Agile Admin is a regularly updated group blog run by four web admins and software developers. Their writing offers a technical focus on an array of hot topics from infrastructure automation to monitoring.

2. DevOps.com

Launched in 2014, DevOps.com covers all aspects of DevOps providing an immense amount of educational content. With contributions from DevOps leaders, the website is a great way to promote new research, upcoming events, long-form publications, and much more.

3. DevOpsWeekly.com

Gareth Rushgrove has been running this popular weekly newsletter for over nine years, with 470 issues published to date. Each week subscribers receive the latest in DevOps news, releases, and upcoming events. The newsletter’s success has led to similar endeavors, notably SRE Weekly, but there’s no denying DevOpsWeekly.com set the precedent.

4. DevOps Café

John Willis and Damon Edwards have been running the interview-driven “DevOps Café” podcast for a number of years (they are up to almost 80 episodes), inviting guests to discuss a wide range of DevOps topics on a monthly basis. Recent episodes have taken on differing approaches to containerization, systems safety and human factors, and DevSecOps.

5. DevOps SubReddit

The DevOps SubReddit is always worth checking out for daily updates to various blog lists and curated content gathered from across the DevOps community.

6. DZone.com

DZone.com is indisputably the most visited DevOps resource with 29 million unique visitors each year and a healthy social media following on Facebook and Twitter. The leading Programming and DevOps platform release one to two articles per day on trending technologies and methodologies. It also has a great glossary with its downloadable Refcardz feature, “the world’s largest library of technical cheat sheets,” which offers a quick yet relatively deep dive summary into key concepts, practices, tools, etc.

7. Ship Happens Podcast

With only two episodes released to date, Splunk + VictorOps’s Ship Happens quickly became one of our favorite podcasts in 2019. Interviewing DevOps and engineering leaders, the podcast follows a format that begins with discussing a central topic such as on-call culture or bootstrapping, then proceeds to the guest sharing insights on the subject based on professional experience, and concludes with “on-call horror stories” that provides practical advice on what to do (and what not to) when responding to an incident.

8. The DevOps Institute

The DevOps Institute, founded in 2015, aims to promote “the human elements of DevOps success.” The continuous learning program offers a series of courses aimed at DevOps practitioners of all levels to gain education and further expertise, offering certification and “digital badging” to its members. The Institute also tracks the DevOps field for latest trends and innovative approaches to DevOps with a list of recommended reading and up-to-date podcasts. Finally, there’s a useful DevOps-specific Jobs Board and Event Calendar.

9. Spiceworks DevOps Forum

The Spiceworks DevOps Forum is one of our favorite and a fantastic place to become part of a wider community. The SpiceCorps section lists local meetups being held around the United States. This forum can be a useful place to see which trends are on the rise and which are declining and engage in wider industry conversation with other DevOps professionals.

Conclusion

We hope these resources help you avoid common DevOps problems new team members typically encounter and instead enable you to continue growing in your role. For more on transforming DevOps practices, check out our ebook on proactive monitoring and incident management co-authored with Splunk + VictorOps.