The ITSM Crowd is a regular hangout hosted by DevOps training provider ITSM Zone that covers many different IT and management topics. On Aug. 11, host Claire Agutter was joined by IT Skeptic Rob England and James Gander from Gander Service Management to take a deeper dive into the impact that DevOps is having on operational roles.

Gander comes from an operational background and wanted to discuss how the role of ops is changing, and England works with many clients who are evolving to work in more agile ways, embracing DevOps principles.

DevOps Needs Ops

All agreed that DevOps doesn’t mean No-Ops.  The traditional “build” and “run” phases are no longer clearly demarcated. Dev will work with Ops to improve and fix live services, and Ops will provide Dev with feedback that will help them to improve.

Ops also needs to embrace the role of “toolsmith” or “toolmaker.” It can support Dev by creating environments that make it easy for Dev to do its job. This could include providing fast, automated access to virtual servers or providing input on monitoring and event management.

Elements of Ops such as the service desk are essential and will never disappear. Customers always will need to be able to contact IT, so this part of the operational role will be present in some form, perhaps moving toward a greater focus on self-service.

Ops Processes Won’t Disappear

Traditional operations processes also still have a place. Change management, for example, is still essential, but it needs to “get out of the way” and enable change to happen, rather than acting as a barrier.

Ops staff need to treat DevOps as an opportunity to learn and improve, not as something to be resisted. There are many great blogs to get started with, and this is an exciting time to be working in IT.

You can view the video here, and I’d love to get your feedback and comments on how you think DevOps is changing the role of operations.