What Does Being DevOps Certified Really Mean?
Mid 2015, Ranger4 launched a DevOps Foundation Course with a certification element – and it’s been very well received. The course is provided by the DevOps Institute – Ranger4 have representation on the Board of Regents with Helen Beal (DevOps Director) who, along with such DevOps luminaries as Gene Kim and Gary Gruver, contributes, reviews and approves their courseware and certification examinations. Ranger4 are also a DevOps Institute Registered Education Provider.
The course is 16 hours so is typically delivered in a classroom over two days and the class participants have a choice of whether to sit the exam at the end of the second day in the classroom, or online at a time of their choice following the exam. There are also online study options available.
So who is taking the course and why?
This is a Foundation Course; it’s not a practitioner course and it’s not tools education. DevOps is a grassroots movement that is driven by change agents: and it’s these we most often see at the public schedule courses – one or two people from single organisations who are proponents of the DevOps movement and are pushing for improvements who want their skills and understanding formally recognised. A key part of the training for these people is hearing the stories and experiences from fellow change agents in other organisations – and we’ve had great diversity of attendance; insurance, retail, gaming, consulting, manufacturing, software, banking.
And there’s also the option to have Ranger4 deliver the course onsite. This tends to happen as part of a DevOps Transformation as an organisation wants to ‘level’ the knowledge across team(s) and incorporate learning into their change programme. Many organisations have set up DevOps teams and although there is debate over the logic behind this approach (have you just created another silo?) there are also many case studies that show this to be an excellent transitional strategy. Once the change agents have taken the public schedule course, they often bring the course to a wider audience within their own organisation.
How can you test DevOps knowledge?
DevOps is notoriously difficult to define, so many people assume this makes it difficult to be testable. The DevOps Foundation Course covers the theories behind the movement alongside practical examples of its application so there are modules addressing:
- DevOps and its relationship with other methodologies such as Agile, Lean and ITSM
- The Three Ways and the Theory of Constraints
- Value Stream Mapping, Kanban and improvement Kata
- Organisational and cultural change
- Continuous Integration/Delivery/Deployment
- Building DevOps toolchains
The exam itself is 60 minutes long (75 minutes if English is not your first language) and is 40 multiple choice questions. A score of 65% or more is required to pass.
So what does being DevOps certified really mean?
It means you have been able to show:
- A solid understanding of the principles underpinning DevOps
- You have studied the work of key practitioners of DevOps
- You can articulate what DevOps could bring to your organisation
It doesn’t prove you have extensive experience delivering DevOps or should be making yourself available to the market as a DevOps consultant; you might be both of these things, but this is a Foundation Course. Additional courses will be available from the DOI via Ranger4 in 2016 around Continuous Delivery and being a DevOps Practitioner.
Ranger4 and Optimus Sourcing have dates running in London on a monthly basis so if you want to book yourself a place on the next DevOps Foundation Course or wish to discuss your DevOps training needs then please get in touch. Either call 0845 519 7408 or email info@optimussourcing.com
