DevOps Responsibilities

Below are the primary responsibilities of a well-rounded, efficient DevOps team.

Project Planning
The staff responsible for DevOps project planning should adopt the agile
methodology to keep up with the CI/CD approach. Here are some tips to improve
DevOps project planning:

 Split projects up into smaller, interdependent pieces of work.

 Create integrated plans that take unplanned work like incidents and defects into
account.
 Use feedback from testing, staging, and deployments to re-plan ongoing
projects.

Projects managers should use the same tools as the software developers. Using the
same tooling enables the team to change priorities quickly, set up tracking
mechanisms, and keep track of ongoing releases.

Learn the difference between Agile and DevOps, two development methodologies that
lead to better products.

Application and Infrastructure Development

The DevOps approach to software development aims for regular, incremental changes
to code versions. However, DevOps engineers rarely code from scratch or work
directly on product code.
Engineers create solutions such as scripts or plugins that save the software
developers’ time. These tasks do not require coding skills, but a DevOps engineer
typically has mid-to-high scripting ability.

A DevOps engineer is responsible for the configuration and optimization of

infrastructure components. Engineers typically use Infrastructure as Code solutions to
speed up setup times and ensure more infrastructure flexibility.

Application and Infrastructure Testing

The importance of continuous testing (or shift-left testing) grows as release cycles
get shorter. DevOps engineers in charge of tests set up tools, practices, and
processes that inspect code early in the pipeline and resolve issues quickly.

The goal of continuous testing is to:

 Increase code quality.

 Create more reliable pipelines.
 Shorten test cycles.
 Keep software defects away from production.

Here are the most common tests DevOps teams run:

 Unit testing: Unit tests get fast feedback on new code. This form of testing
focuses on isolated components that are easy to debug and fix.
 Integration testing: Integration tests happen once components merge into
the shared pipeline. These tests ensure that the build stays stable with new
code additions.
 End-to-end and regression testing: DevOps engineers run these tests by
deploying finalized code to different servers and resources. End-to-end and
regression tests check if the application works in a production-like environment.
 Production testing: Production tests run after the application release to check
for stability.

Automation Implementation
A DevOps engineer uses automation to make software development consistent,
reliable, and efficient. Automation is present at every phase of the software lifecycle,
from build triggering and unit testing to packaging and deploying to environments.

Automation allows a DevOps team to quickly and easily:

 Accelerate pipeline processes.

 Scale environments.
 Set up and manage infrastructure.
 Alter CI/CD workflows.
 Run reliable tests.
 Monitor the pipeline.

Automation eliminates repetitive manual assignments. The lack of recurring tasks

keeps the staff happy, while pipelines become more stable and efficient.

Monitoring
Monitoring allows an engineer to analyze the performance and stability of applications
and infrastructure throughout the software lifecycle. This responsibility consists of
several processes:

 Logging: Logging provides teams with data about critical components.

Application logs, infrastructure logs, and audit logs help teams learn about and
improve products.
 Alerting: Alerting notifies the team and helps engineers stay ahead of issues.
Alerts provide debugging information to help solve problems quickly.
 Tracing: Tracing provides performance and behavioral insights that can
improve the stability and scalability of apps in production.

Good monitoring is vital for cybersecurity. A reliable monitoring tool makes the
difference between a small service interruption and a total outage.

Our article about the different cloud monitoring tools analyzes and compares the best
options on the market.

Deployment
Deployment is the act of installing and setting up a version of the software onto a
target environment. The software version can be a:

 Internal release: A release that does not go outside of the development team
(e.g., software for QA or demo projects).
 External release: A release for customers and end-users in production.
 Development versions: In-progress code a team deploys for development
purposes.

The responsibility of deploying software either belongs to a specific engineer(s), or a

team sets up continuous deployment to automate software releases. With CD, every
code change passes through automated tests and deploys to production
automatically.

Continuous deployment eliminates the need for scheduled releases. The feedback
loop is also quicker, so developers can address issues with more agility and accuracy.

Setting up and maintaining automatic deployments is challenging. If the team is not

ready to take on this responsibility, the company should perfect continuous
integration and delivery first.

Learn the difference between continuous delivery, deployment, and integration, three
key DevOps processes.

Maintenance
DevOps engineers perform routine application maintenance across the pipeline.
Regular maintenance enables a team to:

 Ensure all environments run smoothly.

 Discover and remove vulnerabilities in the application, infrastructure, or
integrations.
 Keep all software up to date.
 Find ways to improve the pipeline.
  Ensure service availability.

Incident Management
Responding and resolving incidents is an essential DevOps responsibility. Incident
management keeps the code and infrastructure safe while ensuring the pipeline does
not slow down. A typical response strategy has five stages:

 Detection: DevOps engineers set up alert tools and systems to detect

anomalies. Most teams have runbooks that inform the staff about the go-to
contact in case of an incident.
 Response: A DevOps team typically assigns multiple engineers to be available
for escalations. If the on-call team member cannot resolve the problem, the
engineer can bring in the right people to assess the impact.
 Resolution: Ideally, DevOps engineers resolve incidents before the problem
has a chance to impact the rest of the pipeline.
 Analysis: Whenever a team resolves an issue, engineers analyze the root
cause and the response tactic. The goal is to improve system resilience and the
team’s ability to detect and respond to incidents.
 Readiness: The team reinforces the system and prevents similar issues from
occurring in the future.

Security (DevSecOps)
In traditional setups, security teams operate separately from software developers.
This independent approach does not work for DevOps. Rapid development cycles
require DevOps engineers to integrate security into the pipeline.

The need for integrated security gave rise to the term DevSecOps. DevSecOps
requires a team to:

 Integrate application and infrastructure security into the pipeline with minimal
disruption to operations.
 Automate security gates to keep the DevOps workflow quick.
 Select the right tools to integrate security continuously.

Read our article about DevSecOps for an in-depth analysis of how built-in security
protects the pipeline.

Writing Documentation
Documentation is the primary source of knowledge within a DevOps team. Formal
documentation enables engineers to record new features, source code, system
requirements, design instructions, bug fixes, tool guides, response plans, etc.

Good documentation is vital to:

 Incident response plans.

 Software reliability and availability.
 Onboarding new engineers.
 On-call rotations.
 Promoting DevOps best principles.
 Removing silos and tribal knowledge between different departments.
DevOps Team Management
Depending on the size of the team, one DevOps engineer may need to manage other
experts. The person in charge of DevOps team management is responsible for:

 Organizing the logistics of an IT project.

 Ensuring all staff is aware of objectives and deadlines.
 Ensuring the staff has real-time visibility across the pipeline.
 Selecting the right CI/CD tools.

Learn more about GitOps, a subset of DevOps.

DevOps Roles
Below are six roles a company must account for to see success from DevOps.

DevOps Evangelist
An evangelist is the change agent who promotes and orchestrates the DevOps culture
across an organization. This person is responsible for initiating DevOps adoption and
proactively improving the team. An evangelist must:

 Advocate the benefits of DevOps by identifying and quantifying the business

impacts.
 Ensure executives, development, and operations departments buy into the
DevOps transition.
 Identify the roles to support optimal software delivery.
 Ensure IT staff have sufficient DevOps training.
 Eliminate silos from IT delivery and operations.
 Create integration and orchestration blueprints.
 Select the right DevOps tools for the team.
Transitioning to DevOps requires nurturing a learning culture in which a team
repeatedly fails, learns from mistakes, and improves. This cycle starts with the
DevOps evangelist.

An evangelist is essential at the start of the DevOps journey. Once a company

embraces the new way of working, the evangelist continues to find ways to improve
the pipeline architecture.

Refer to our post Infrastructure in the Age of DevOps to learn more about the
emerging trends and the benefits of adopting DevOps.

Release Manager
Release managers are responsible for the management and coordination of the
product from development through production. While similar to project managers,
these staff members handle technical details a traditional PM cannot manage. Release
managers must:

 Oversee the coordination, integration, and progress of development, testing,

and deployment.
 Support continuous delivery by implementing agile processes.
 Maintain the end-to-end application delivery toolchain.
 Measure and interpret DevOps metrics and KPIs.

Other common names for a release manager are a release engineer or a product
stability manager.

Automation Expert
An automation expert is responsible for turning repetitive manual tasks into scripts
the team can run on-demand. An automation expert must:

 Find automation opportunities across the product lifecycle.

 Select the right processes and tools to automate processes.
 Design scripts the team can use while developing, testing, and monitoring the
application.
 Continuously look for ways to speed up development sprints.
 Promote lean thinking across the organization.

Other names for an automation expert are an automation

strategist and integration specialist.

Use automation testing tools to streamline and improve your team’s testing
processes.

Software Developer
Software developers write product code. However, in a DevOps culture, a developer’s
scope of responsibilities expands. A DevOps software developer must:

 Write front-end and back-end code for new releases.

 Launch unit testing.
 Work with QA to ensure the code is bug-free before delivery.
 Monitor the pipeline for issues and potential improvement opportunities.
QA and XA Experts
While software developers are responsible for some testing, a DevOps team still
requires a dedicated QA (quality assurance) department. DevOps QA testers are
responsible for:

 Testing and verifying releases.

 Documenting bug reports.
 Ensuring features and functions align with design specs.

A strong DevOps testing structure also requires an XA (experience

assurance) expert. Whereas QA personnel tests code for functionality, XA staff
ensures new features do not negatively affect the end-user experience.

Security Engineer
DevOps security engineers keep the releases safe at all stages of the lifecycle. These
staff members are responsible for:

 Protecting the pipeline from potential attacks.

 Keeping end-users safe from cyber threats.
 Ensuring the production complies with standards and regulations.