DevOps comprises various aspects including IT operations, ensuring collaboration between engineers throughout the development lifecycle starting from – development to design to production. A Gartner report suggests that ‘through 2022, 75% of DevOps initiatives will fail to meet expectations – due to issues around organizational learning and change.’  At EngineerBabu we help enterprises hire remote DevOps teams effortlessly in six simple steps.

Over the years we have helped enterprises across domains and of every scale, hire remote DevOps team. Therefore, in this article, we will share some of the industry-tested and proven best practices of effortlessly hiring remote DevOps team and efficiently managing them.

Challenges Remote DevOps Tackle

Hiring remote DevOps team can help enterprises tackle some of the common software product development challenges like –

• Delays in software development and delivery.
• Issues related to production and automation.
• Challenges during migrating the legacy infrastructure to the cloud.
• Challenges in ensuring faster quality testing, development, and modularity.
• Effective communication and faster resolution of issues.
• Challenges during third-party integration, and other interface issues.

Many times enterprises fail to leverage the full benefits of the DevOps team because they treat them as an extension of the IT operations team. To Hire a remote DevOps team will require an understanding that DevOps teams do much more than managing IT operations. Yes, the most important role DevOps plays is bringing IT operations and Software engineering together. But, that is not all. DevOps team is responsible to manage and optimize the overall work of the development or engineering team. This can include multiple things – streamlining collaboration, QA testing, process automation, etc.

Even before the pandemic hit, enterprises realized that in the world of Agile development streamlining the work between IT operations and engineering is critical. Thus DevOps had already become the norm and was enabling breaking silos between the engineering teams. This need accelerated when enterprises were forced to adopt remote work due to COVID-19. Tech leaders fastened their efforts in hiring remote DevOps teams. But due to the lack of infrastructural and logistical processes of hiring remote teams, there are still gaps in hiring a DevOps team effectively and then managing them efficiently.

Best Practices of Hiring a Remote DevOps Team

A DevOps team will have multiple members with different skill sets and experiences. A DevOps team will work on aspects like –

• Configuration management
• CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Development)
• Automated Testing
• Infrastructure as a Code
• Continuous Monitoring
• Orchestration
• Containerization

Since, there are various skill sets – both technical and program management that will be needed a DevOps team may consist of DevOps Architects, DevOps Engineers, Infrastructure Engineers, or even Operations Engineers. So how do you hire a remote DevOps team with relevant experience and skill sets that meet the needs of your enterprise? Here are some crucial key factors to be considered.

1. Plan and Outline an Objective

The overarching objective of hiring a remote DevOps team is universal – driving efficiency and agility. However, that might not be enough. To set up a remote DevOps team you must flesh out the objectives better. Some key outcomes that you might want to consider towards hiring remote DevOps team can be –

• Streamlining infrastructure and update configurations
• Automating building, testing, and the overall development processes
• Accelerating Innovation
• Delivering outcomes internally and externally on-time
• Improving DevOps with Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery or Deployment Pipelines
• Optimizing the entire Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
• Eliminating silos and fostering collaboration and communication between Dev and Ops teams.

2. Mandatory Skill Sets to Consider While Hiring Remote DevOps Team

A DevOps team will be responsible for the effective implementation of every step of your SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle). From development phase to testing to operations; the DevOps team would have multifaceted skill sets like –

a. Understanding of QA Processes

QA is a crucial or the most important aspect of software development. DevOps engineers will be responsible to ensure that QA testing is carried out flawlessly. They should be able to analyze every development and deployment stage to ensure that there are minimal bugs and errors in the process.

b. Sandboxing and Virtualization

The DevOps team will be responsible for effective automation of the process. Hence they will need to be well versed with the concept of virtualization to ensure the extraction of hardware or software to ensure effective remote operations. This will include the virtualization of servers, networks, desktops, or applications. Sandboxing is another aspect that the team will need to know. Sandboxing refers to running a program in an isolated box and controlling the sources that the program can access. This helps in security and testing and curtailing the spread of vulnerabilities or preventing system failure.

c. Sysadmins Skills

DevOps engineers must be able to understand how the software behaves while deploying it and this is where they will need to have ninja sysadmin skills. This will help them deploy software effectively and troubleshoot right on time. Along with this, it will be crucial that they have some understanding of various programming languages.

d. Hardware and Cloud Technologies

Cloud has become the need of the hour. Most organizations save their huge pool of data on the cloud. Companies like Amazon, Google provide infrastructure to organizations to deploy cloud. Hence, a DevOps engineer must have an understanding of the cloud infrastructure your enterprise has deployed.

e. Programming Skills

A good DevOps team should have engineers with the following programming skills sets

• Development of large and robust applications
• Writing error-free codes
• Understanding of various frameworks, libraries, and development tools.

Understanding of the CI/CD (Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery/Deployment) Process

CI/CD is a crucial process in the Agile development world. This implies that the fundamental code is tracked and kept in a version-controlled system like GitHub libraries. A DevOps engineer will be responsible for merging the various versions or all the working copies into the mainline before the release or regularly. They will also have to ensure the deployment works continues in increments and is deployed flawlessly. Your DevOps team should be able to efficiently stitch all these three aspects together.

a. Project Monitoring

Project monitoring is another skill set that the DevOps team must have. They will be responsible to monitor your project at every stage. Micro Services, Servers, Databases, and others, make the building blocks of an application. As a result, the DevOps team should be experienced in continuously monitoring the operability and availability of these components.

b. Security

In today’s world security has become a major concern for enterprises across the globe. A DevOps team must be equipped to ensure that robust security measures are taken care of while developing. This will include ensuring security measures are taken care of all components like software, hardware, firmware, drivers, and more.

Choose a Perfect Partner to Hire Remote DevOps Team

DevOps has become an important aspect for all software teams irrespective of the scale of the development. A DevOps team is the ninja team that brings the entire development to deployment phase together. Given the multiple skill sets required in the team, it can be challenging to hire and build a remote DevOps team in-house. This is where an outsourcing partner can help. 

However, the most important factor to consider while looking for a partner will be to choose a partner depending on their expertise. Never go for generalists rather choose partners who specialize in this area. At EngineerBabu, we help enterprises of every scale to hire DevOps team effortlessly in less than a week. Our six-step approach ensures that you get the best pre-vetted DevOps engineers for your project at affordable costs. From requirement gathering to team handoff our DevOps engineers ensure quicker application delivery, improved innovation, and give you a stable operating environment.

Best Practices for Managing a Remote DevOps Team

Hiring a remote DevOps team is just the first step. The critical factor for the success of the remote DevOps team will be managing them efficiently. So, here are some key tips for managing a remote DevOps team effectively and getting the best out of them.

1. Ensure Effective Communication

For remote teams to work at their best, effective communication is important. Ensure that you have a daily scrum and fortnightly sprint planning with your remote DevOps team. So that milestones and objectives are clearly defined and understood by all the teams. Use tools like Slack, Zoom, etc. to continuously communicate with your remote DevOps team.

2. Leverage Cloud

As remote working becomes a norm, effective storage of data has become critical. This is where cloud storage can help. Not only your data and information are secure, but it is also accessible by everyone irrespective of their location. Deploying open-source data infrastructure can also facilitate better collaboration and boost innovation within your remote DevOps team.

3. Use Advanced Tech-Suite to Facilitate Effective Working

Remote working has amplified the need for tools like G-Suite, JIRA, Trello, etc. to collaborate, manage, and plan work within teams. Thus, ensure to use them well to facilitate better collaboration between your in-house and remote DevOps teams.

Wrapping up

DevOps has become a critical aspect of software development. In the new normal, hiring a remote DevOps team can help you in optimizing both cost and efforts for your company. A specialized outsourcing partner can help you build a remote DevOps team while you take care of other crucial business aspects. At EngineerBabu we can help you hire remote DevOps teams in a time and cost-effective manner. Therefore, to know more about our six-step easy process of hiring a remote DevOps team – connect with us.

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