Best Guide to Getting Started In DevOps

As DevOps starts to become trendy, more people are beginning to recognize this budding industry as the next haven for the IT minded innovators of our time. Everyday more companies are looking to DevOps for their IT solutions and more people are beginning their DevOps journey. The DevOps world is still new and relatively unexplored, yet people are writing books, businesses are adopting it's methodologies and companies are starting certification programs at an exponential rate. Getting up to speed in any new industry can be difficult and intimidating, which is why we put together a simple and comprehensive guide to Getting Started In DevOps.

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What is DevOps?

If you do a quick search, you will see no lack of answers from every news source, thought leader, and blog in the IT industry. This is due to the fact that it is both the most searched and most answered question you will come across. While there is no one true answer, many people agree that DevOps is the idea of Developers and Operations working together to achieve a goal. For a more detailed and widely regarded answer we suggest What is DevOps by The Agile Admin.  

Books: The Industry Standards

There are many great books that you will read throughout your DevOps journey but if you are getting started, these are 3 of the industry standards you want to have in your back pocket.             

The Lingo

Over the past couple years we have seen the evolution of the Waterfall methodology turn into Lean, turn into Agile, turn into Continuous Delivery. There are a lot of new words out there for any beginner trying to break into the DevOps community. Below is a list of words worth keeping in your DevOps pocket dictionary at all times.

Agentless	Continuous Delivery	Orchestration Pipeline
Agile	Delivery Pipeline	Provisioning
Build Automation	Lean	Release Management
Continuous Integration	Microservices	NoOps

 

DevOps and IT News

Keeping up with industry news is essential to your DevOps maturity. New industries like this one make significant changes daily, and you will want to be in the know about the latest software release or trend that everyone is talking about. Here are 3 news sites worth keeping on your dashboard.             

Social Media, Webinars and Blogs

If you really want to be a part of the DevOps community, a mild participation in Social Media, Webinars and Blogs is required. Even if you loathe Twitter and hate filling out forms, keeping up with thought leadership in the industry requires some participation. Below I have mapped out the basics to start working on.Twitter - Great place to follow and connect with thought leaders like @RealGeneKim, @JezHumble, and @PatrickDeBois. Also checkout #DevOps, #Agile, #SysAdmin, #Cloud, #ContinuousDeliveryLinkedIn- There are a ton of fantastic groups available. Search any of your favorite keywords and join some groups.Blogs - There are some really great blogs out there to keep up with. Here are just a couple: Code as Craft, The Agile Admin, DevOpsGuys, XebiaLabs and many many more.Webinars - This is one of the most incredible free resources available to anyone in the DevOps industry, amateur or expert. Check out the upcoming events pages for any of the major products, Chef, XebiaLabs, Puppet, Ansible, Jenkins/Cloudbees, etc. and you will find a slew of thought leaders speaking and educating  on innovative topicsOther - Podcasts and MeetUps are both on the rise in the DevOps industry. Look them up and check them out.   The DevOps industry is an exciting new world with an ever-changing landscape. The information provided in this post is only just a tip of the iceberg. Explore, be creative, and most of all be innovative as you start your travels through the wonderful world of DevOps.