Hello there. My name is Evelyn. I am uh part of the Devops Institute and I hope there are a few of you uh listening in here who are interested in Devops and to some extent, particularly in a career of Devops.Um If there's one thing I wanna just right away uh share with you, there is no better time than now to be in Devops and in it, um I have been in it my entire life. I don't know anything else. Um I know how to cook, but unfortunately, that doesn't really pay the college tuition. So let's get started. Um As I said, I'm part of the Devops Institute. We are an association uh with a lot of uh great stuff, but really what we're trying to do is we're trying to help and drive human transformation in the digital age. And uh for three years in a row, we have done some research on what are the key skills for the des human. And as the research lead on that, um I wanna share with you some of the findings and hopefully inspire you to look in a career, which is absolutely exciting, uh which has a lot of different uh opportunities. So let's get started. Now, first, I think it's important.

Um the pandemic actually has changed a lot of things and particularly when we think about the digital services, um particularly right now, there is a big conversation uh in Germany, for example, where I'm based um around the, the digital um card for our vaccinations. Um standing up such a thing, of course, um has probably in the past would have taken a long time. But we see a lot of organizations um who actually are putting together software and a variety of capabilities because they had to um crossing boundaries uh and working with people across the different silos uh has made that possible. And again, the pandemic, which is a crisis in many times uh has changed how we work and how we approach things. Now, as I mentioned, uh in this particular study, which again, we did for uh three years now in a row, this has a lot of respondents. Uh We had over 2000 folks who um gave us some input. Um There are two key things I want to share with you. So during COVID, it hasn't stopped organizations from hiring develops. You can see here the data on the right, sorry, on the left hand side. And um the hiring isn't over yet. If you look at linkedin, for example, or if you are part of indeed or other um areas and places where people are looking for jobs.

There is a tremendous amount of recruiting uh important to know the salaries according to Robert, half of a Devops engineer. And I'll take that, take that title with a grain of Salt if you need to know more, um, reach out to me, but the starting salary is at about 97,000 and can go up to 100 and uh 1000 actually higher than developers. So, um if um that's uh something interesting to you, not just about salary, but certainly an important thing. Um But that's quite important to know. Now, there are some challenges I want to talk through and particularly I want to put that in the light of who we are and what we do in technology because a lot of the challenges really, the biggest challenges are around people, but there are structural challenges, process challenges and technology challenges for people typically seems to be the one which over my almost 20 years um now in consulting and advisory as an it analyst um has been the biggest challenge.

Sometimes I have to say, I feel like a psychologist where my clients are on the couch and they're asking me a question, um what they should be doing and it isn't about process and it isn't about technology, it's really about structure and it's about people. So let's go further. As I have been based in Colorado, I like to use the uh the journey of a mountain, we're climbing the mountain, but maybe in this case, we're descending the mountain because at the bottom of the mountain is really where there is a lot of rich data which I want to give you a journey through relative to the skills, which is what we're researching in our research as part of the devops Institute.

So challenges, the first one uh is, as I said, people challenges in s so a lot of people just can't get into the mindset of what this is all about. Um a lot of other challenges are you need a variety of human skills and I'll elaborate on those I put in brackets soft skills because I really don't like the word soft anymore because there isn't anything soft about soft skills, they're really hard. Uh And then there is a tremendous hesitation uh on upskilling. I also like to use that new word instead of training on the structural challenges. There is layers of management. Um That sometimes means that there is not a lot of move and progress um and causes some challenges with making uh changes. There are silos, those who are in it. Many of you probably have been or even not in it outside of it. There are silos which makes it very, very difficult to introduce change and there is a lack of skilled leaders, particularly um in the digital transformation I find and we found and research even now at the Dubs Institute or in my former position at Forrester research that there is a lack of leaders knowing what it takes to actually digitally transform.

And that is uh AAA significant challenge and a downside for what we need to do in the transformation of how we deliver software and how we help our companies and organizations to be much more successful. And then there's process challenges. Of course, there's a lack of discipline in the different teams, There's complexity, there's a lot of challenges around the end and visibility of the software development life cycle. Um The pictures of whatever journey maps we have might not be complete. There is only a part of it, it's really hard to establish them. And so it makes it very challenging to actually bring things together. Now, one thing we found which is quite important um from our survey is that there is a requiring or there is a variety of good habits which already have been established. So our survey participants told us that they are actually adopting two key ways from the devops ways of working. One is that of a learning organization, which is if you're familiar with devops, it's the third way of devops really the continuous learning and experimentation without fear of learning and understanding what's happening.

And the second one is safety culture, a safety culture means that I am actually able to make suggestions without being afraid uh without um being judged and that I can actually parti participate in projects and products, most likely products. Again, some language change, we in the s teams don't anymore, talk about projects. We actually talk about products. There's lots more to that, but I won't go into that. Now, interestingly, this is from our survey. Um But on the other side, we also know that when we asked about, does your organization have a formal upskilling training, a K A training program in the IT or DEV ops team? Um, 39% said they don't have an upskilling program. Now, that means you can look at it from class, half, full glass, half empty. And I think I'm the first only German optimist. I would say, well, 61% actually have an upscaling program, which is good. Um But again, 39 saying that they don't, um, and actually 10% of those said they didn't know, um was a little bit scary and hopefully, um, you can think about potentially how and where to upscale uh yourself this joining this session. And congratulations to Anna and her team is part of upscaling and actually qualifies for it because you learn a variety of things. All right, we're getting down to the baseline uh base phase one of the mountain. So what can you do?

Well, first, I want to inspire you to be a brave member of the develops future because it is going to be a really wild ride. Very exciting, but you have to get ready, which means you have to think about a few things relative to capabilities and skills. Now, this research we have done over the three years, have we have focused on five domains, the domains of culture and human skills, the domain of processing framework, capabilities and skills, the domain of functional skills, um and the intelligent automation and automation skills and the technology ecosystem and technical skills.

Um So, absolutely important that these, that you understand these are the five key areas which we're researching relative to what skills are necessary. And hopefully the next few slides, even though they're very data heavy, uh leave you with some ideas on where you can hone in some of the skills which you need relative to a year in the S uh in the future in devops. No, we want, we wanted to know which of these um domains are absolutely must have skill domains for those uh who are going down the DEV ops journey. So we asked, how would you rate the importance of the following major skill domains for DEV ops team member? And here you can see human aspects um and technology ecosystem uh and automation skills um are kind of a bit of a a running up. Now. There's a little bit of story to that. Um automation skills this year has become number one. It's almost like the Oscar goes to automation skills. Well, last year automation skills was actually second and human skills were first. Now, that's pretty typical for a crisis when there is a crisis like the one we had uh and still are to some extent in um automating and having the capability and the knowledge to automate leveraging a variety of platforms is always the one we grasp and gravel to.

Um and then comes some of the soft skills or as I said, human skills, third technology ecosystem. As you know, we've adopted a tremendous amount of different uh topics such as containers and serve list and of course cloud, which is almost like old age now, but hybrid computing and hybrid computing platforms and then of course understanding process and frameworks and uh having some functional skills including it, operations, maybe some development background, of course, and security and a variety of others.

Now, I wanna share this with you but I don't want to go into it except focus your eyes on the center because the execution, the expertise, the experience and the exploration are going to be important for you for a evaluate where you are and B share with prospects and maybe within your own organization, what you have done execution means or is shown in what projects have you actually done?

Um which is absolutely sharing on terms of uh what are you capable of your expertise? Sometimes could be the certifications you have had um or the degrees as we're dealing here with a lot of folks who are uh start up in start up positions in, in, in initial jobs or over the years. Like, for example, myself, I started out in it operations, became a developer. Um have actually believed, I think I've been in SRE before SRE was a job. Um Plus I've done a lot of data, uh mining data analysis. I'm a data, uh I'm a DB A and uh system admin on a variety of things. So I have a lot of expertise, but I'm also a public speaker and I'm a thought leader. Now on the experience that goes back to what I already said, it has to do with where have you been in terms of um the different projects and project products you have been part of and then last but not least the exploration. How willing are you to actually get out of the box from where you are today? Just in a quick chat. I shared something with someone who's had a major in economics and she wanted to do something different uh which I think is exciting.

All right, top master human skills you can see here on the right hand side, uh A few others were on the left hand side, the top skills, relative to human skills, collaboration, problem solving, sharing and knowledge, interpersonal skills, communication skills. On the process framework, skills.

On the left hand side, the top five concept of service, uh software development process flow Agile Scrum and SRE site reliability. On the right hand, side, some other ones which I think are absolutely exciting, chaos engineering, value, stream management and design thinking.

I want to highlight um again, when we talk about the top five, there are in the report which is available on the devops.com uh in Devops institute.com, there's a lot more detail to that. And again, instead of reading to you the percentage on the left hand side, what I really want to do is point out um some of the things on the right hand side, which are a lot more exciting um relative to what um is up and coming. And so again, value stream management, the understanding of how and where value streams and how they look from the beginning to the end is one which we're seeing highly uh as a high uh skill demand relative to um uh the DeVos world on the functional skills. Um On the left hand side, again, the top five, of course, typical the it infrastructure operations, security, architecture and application development. But focus on the right hand side, having testing knowledge really if you have been in testing or in Q A or if you are GRC in or if you like this economics major would be a great uh uh thinking to look into potentially some DeVos and then business continuity or disaster recovery.

A very important topic as we are going digital and a lot of services and products are digital and then on the automation skills um again, on the left hand side, not really surprise, uh continuous delivery, continuous integration. Uh That's C I CD with operations and DEV se ops a very important one because security must be built. And then on the right hand side, a few things I want to point out data ops and model ops um particularly if you are thinking and are in A I and have interest in that type of data lake work. uh like uh A I OPS is one topic. Um And then the database administrators are still a very important skill to have um structuring data. Um leading to of course, maybe at some point um a data science perspective, all right, technical skills, cloud platform, not a surprise having an understanding of different operating systems, containers, application technologies.

And then on the right hand side for those of us who and I am not any longer or haven't been part of the mainframe, but there are people out there who still have main frame skill. It came in at 11% of a must have skill, which is still exciting because there's a lot of organizations who have systems of records and systems of data in mainframe. So there's nothing wrong with developing your skill or showing off your skill in mainframe. No. How can you become part of the devops journey? A very important um question. There is a variety of uh things to do. So, first of course, I I want to say join us in the Devops uh Institute uh as an association or a membership, we have over 55,000 members. Um We have ambassadors who are wonderful people. I think we have over 200 ambassadors worldwide who have the ability to carry out the Devops fire um across their organizations, across their uh companies and across the world and chapters and things like that. Um So happy to, if you have questions to help you determine how to do that. But what also is important that you build if you are thinking well, I really like this. This is exciting. I am maybe stuck in my network operations center. I am a snog.

I'm stuck in system administration. I may be a developer, but I feel like I need to do something else. I want to be much more active. Um Here are um a few guiding things to explore for you. So the first one of course, having an understanding of what the role is like, have a look at the Devops uh Institute report this year, the 2021 upskilling, but then you also need to think about your own skills. Um How do you actually um can you determine your capabilities and skills leverage what I shared with you that skill framework again, which is part of the report, which is the circle with all the different skills around that, looking at those and understanding what are your ambitions?

Where do you want to go. Where are your experiences? Where is your expertise? What execution have you had and then start thinking out of the box how to explore that further into something which is related. So an example, if you are a system administrator today and might be in an organization, but your organization might be thinking about SRE site reliability engineer or maybe not, maybe you need to think about that topic, explore it, understand it, potentially get some certification, do some reading, do some excellent research out there and potentially bring it up to your leadership.

Maybe there is some Greenfield opportunity for you to start something. I recently spoke to a very large bank who has actually done just that. They started out with a pilot of an SRE with four people initiated by an individual, a very important individual, but also a very motivated individual. And today they have a 100 SRE people inside the company and the team and the individual which started, it was extremely happy.

Then honestly assess your willingness to change. How willing are you to change? Now? That's very individualistic. I've made a lot of changes in my life and besides moving from the United States back to Europe after 32 years, but changes in my careers have only given me uh opportunities.

Now, changes don't necessarily need to go up, they can be sideways and sometimes they go down. Um And there's nothing wrong with it because all of that is good for continuously changing and updating and honing what you can do, then plan and prioritize where you like to grow.

Make a list, make a connection could talk to a peer, reach out to one of us at the DeVos Institute. And for some reason, uh if you have need help, just continue to reach out uh relative to all of that. And then last, but at least develop the skills which are missing with that. I hope this helped if you need more details, happy to um connect coach, help uh engage. Um either myself um you can find me on linkedin on Twitter or at the Devops Institute. And with that, hopefully, uh I gave you some ideas on how to become a Devops human for the next normal, which we're all in. Thank you so much.