ARE YOU READY FOR DEVOPS? REQUIRED SKILL SET FOR DEVOPS TEAMS

In order to react quickly to changing environments and build a customer-centric setup, more and more organizations are deciding to work with the agile IT software development approach. But for the fast delivery of new software features in very short time, other parts of the IT department are necessary as well. Hence, the DevOps concept appears and connects development to IT operations activities within service-centric IT teams. To date, there has been very little empirical research on the skills required for the successful setup of a DevOps-oriented IT team. This study addresses this gap by conducting a multi-perspective research. We have collected data with the help of a workshop and interviews with IT experts. Seven skill categories—full-stack development, analysis, functional, decision-making, social, testing, and advisory skills—with 36 concrete skills were identified. Our study highlights that a combination of distinct development, operations, and management skills is necessary to successfully work within a DevOps team. This research explains core DevOps skill categories and provides a deeper understanding of the skill set of an ideal DevOps team setting. We describe these skills and skill categories and list their implications for research and practice.

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