The DevOps Test

These are a couple of potential questions which you and your company could answer to do some expectation management and see where you could improve. It is inspired by the Joel Test and additionally covers typical DevOps topics.

How do you control your source?

• 0: FTP
• 1: CVS
• 2: SVN
• 3: Git / Mecurial
• 4: Git including basic branching model
• 5: Advanced branching model including PRs

How fast is a change deployed into production?

• 0: Within months
• 1: Within weeks
• 2: Within days
• 3: Within hours
• 5: Within minutes

What is the mean time to fix a bug?

• 0: Weeks
• 3: Days
• 5: Hours

How long does a developer need to get critical computing resources?

• 0: Weeks
• 2: Days and it’s automated.
• 3: Hours, it’s automated and Devs can change the provisioning script.
• 5: Fully declarative through scheduler (e.g. Kubernetes)

Do you have central logging solutions for your systems?

• 0: No central logging
• 3: Central logging
• 5: Central logging and dashboards for everyone visible

The performance of our system is monitored:

• 0: Never
• 2: Manually
• 4: Automated with CI/CD
• 5: Results continuously monitored

How do you transfer knowledge between Dev and DevOps?

• 0: We don’t. We have specialists for that.
• 3: Monthly presentations on relevant topics.
• 5: Regular pairing sessions.

How do you ensure infrastructure code quality?

• 0: Not explicitly.
• 1: Scripts visible to other team members.
• 3: Regular feedback sessions.
• 5: Fully automated tested.

How is your DevOps integrated in team communication?

• 0: They are in different buildings and we communicate via Email.
• 1: Adhoc meetings for urgent topics.
• 3: Regular meetings.
• 5: Fully integrated including Standups.

How do you measure progress with DevOps topics?

• 0: We don’t. It’s just work that needs to be done.
• 3: We have an issue tracker and monthly planning sessions.
• 5: We have our own Kanban board and a Cumulative Flow Diagram.

Do you have trained DevOps colleagues?

• 0: We renamed Ops to DevOps.
• 1: One guy started writing Chef recipes
• 3: One guy did a DevOps certification
• 5: We have couple of specialists who train others.

Ops topics are covered during retrospectives

• 0: Ops guys in the retro? Why?
• 1: Well, we had one person who came once
• 3: Sometimes they say their point
• 5: ScrumMaster ensures Ops topics are covered

People with Dev and Ops background are on the same salary grids

• 0: No
• 1: Well, graduates are.
• 3: More or less. We have a few historical leftovers.
• 5: Yes sure.

What development environment do you use?

• 0: local, manually set up stack
• 1: manually set up development machine where everyone is working on with rsync/ftp deployment
• 3: self-provisioned Vagrant machines to develop locally
• 4: self-provisioned Docker containers where I work on locally
• 5: Pre-defined development containers that are available

Our individual personal feedback cycles are

• 0: Not existent
• 1: Annual
• 3: Monthly
• 5: Weekly