Network DevOps Transformation
This article was originally published in July 2021 on my GitHub io blog here
Purpose
I gave a presentation on DevOps terminology, roles and strategy to a group of leaders in the networking group of my employer. The purpose of the presentation was to engage in open dialogue and support facilitating the path to a successful DevOps transformation for our network teams.
The catalyst for my presentation was based on understanding who would be assigned to some very technical-specific DevOps roles. I took some time to put together a slide deck on DevOps topics (linked below) which led to a very fruitful conversation during our call. Based on the dialogue and feedback I received from the presentation, it was apparent that there was a much clearer understanding amongst the group on what a Network DevOps transformation might look like for our specific scenario.
Background
Over the past several months a small group of us embarked on a journey into uncharted territory with goals to design a complete CI/CD infrastructure using Azure DevOps by building out the architecture completely from scratch. A key driver for this was automating the upcoming deployments for our global cloud firewall solution which was going to be hosted in all of our landing zones.
We were highly collaborative amongst ourselves and also reached out to engineers on different teams for valuable insight as we progressed. Once we nailed down the design and architecture for our ADO CI/CD infrastructure our next task was to train our network support teams on how to use it all. We held weekly/monthly demos reviewing ADO Git, Wiki, build/release pipelines, etc. and built out lab environments for our different cloud providers to encourage a learning environment within the network teams.
Presentation
I've done a mock-up of the "Network DevOps Transformation" presentation as the feedback I received from the group was very positive. My colleagues found the information to be beneficial in their understanding of DevOps and what a transformation from a traditional Operations team into a highly performing DevOps team might look like as an entry point.
I've removed any employer branding and company-specific details from the presentation. What you'll find in the youtube recording and slide deck links below are the core contents of the presentation that I gave originally. This is all publicly available information based on my research and personal DevOps experience over the past couple of years.
YouTube recording: Network DevOps Transformation
Slide deck: Network DevOps Transformation pdf presentation
Final Thoughts
I hope you've found this presentation helpful as you move along in your DevOps journey. As I've learned in my research and experience, every DevOps transformation is going to look a little different - there is no one size fits all approach and not everyone will agree on everything. Although we may not always agree, the main goal is to arrive at that self-organizing system of collaboration where all members of the team feel valued and respected.
