BCS Foundation Certificate in DevOps

Your certified foundation in DevOps

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COURSE DETAILS

Foundation Certificate in DevOps is a great starting point for an individual or organisation wishing to embark upon the DevOps journey. Through this certification, you’ll develop your knowledge and skills of the DevOps methodology. You’ll learn how to build tools and select best practices to help your business deliver applications and services more efficiently.

The course is designed to help you develop the knowledge on how applying DevOps will support the culture of your business’ departments and the teamwork between your employees. At the end of your accelerated course, you’ll sit the BCS Foundation Certificate in DevOps exam and get certified.

Entry Requirements

There are no formal requirements for this certification.

Course Level

Learner / Professional / Expert Level

Course Location

Online/Blended

Accreditation / Awarding Body

BCS and ICE

What will you learn

Section 1: Introducing DevOps

Module 1: Understand the traditional IT challenges that exist, which have allowed DevOps to emerge as the most logical way to operate in an IT environment

Module 2: Recall the history of DevOps and associated key events

Module 3: Understand what is involved when an organisation embarks on an Agile and DevOps transformation journey

Module 4: Understand what the business case justification is for a DevOps transformation

Section 2: Benefits of DevOps

Module 1: Show understanding of the various Agile practices that compliment a DevOps way of working

Module 2: Understand why an organisation should focus on products and services and how DevOps allows the benefits of these to thrive

Module 3: Understand why autonomous teamwork is vital for DevOps to be successful, relying on teams to deliver sustainable value

Module 4: Understand the CALMS model and the impact it has on a DevOps transformation

Section 3: Culture

Module 1: Understand the various models that explain how teams operate differently, depending on the circumstances and context, and how teams may be better equipped to succeed within the right culture

Module 2: Explain that team agility is a mindset: a common understanding within a team of how to operate in as lean a way as possible, which should not become a set of processes

Module 3: Explain why cross-functional teams are mandatory to allow for commitment-based delivery and fully autonomous teams

Module 4: Understand the key differences between motivators and de-motivators that ultimately lead to job satisfaction

Module 5: Explain the differences between servant leadership and traditional management techniques, understanding which is more appropriate for modern IT delivery

Section 4: Automation

Module 1: Explain what Continuous Integration (CI) is and why it is vital for any organisation looking to reduce their time to market, with a regular cadence of deliverable working software

Module 2: Improve agility and automation via the application of various environmental management practices and techniques

Module 3: Understand how to apply critical release management activities; planning, scheduling and controlling a software build through different stages and environments

Module 4: Explain that test automation is the use of software to control the execution of tests, allowing for the comparison of actual outcomes with predicted outcomes

Module 5: Explain how deployments in DevOps allow changes to travel the entire pipeline and get promoted into production automatically, resulting in multiple deployments daily

Module 6: Understand how to use data and data management to ensure code is ready for production

Section 5: Lean

Module 1: Apply techniques to maximise flow optimisation within a team

Module 2: Understand why Work In Progress (WIP) is potentially extremely wasteful and apply various techniques to help to limit WIP, allowing for a better workflow

Module 3: Know the Theory of Constraints (TOC) and recall basic constraint management practices

Module 4: Explain the 8 Types of Waste according to Lean guidelines and why each type may be considered to have a negative effect on productivity

Module 5: Understand that a customer focus, which provides the customer with a better product or service, should always be the driving factor of a DevOps team

Section 6: Measurement

Module 1: Understand how product goals should be clearly aligned with business goals, to ensure that value is being added

Module 2: Understand the different metrics that can be used to determine a successful delivery

Module 3: Understand the different metrics that can be used to ensure the business operations are working as effectively as possible

Module 4: Understand how captured metrics may be analysed to ensure that feedback is used appropriately and efficiently

Module 5: Explain the differences between Lead Time and Cycle Time; specifically, that Lead Time ends at delivery, whereas Cycle Time is when the item is ready for delivery

Module 1: Explain why collaboration is vital for DevOps success and what can be done to ensure that collaboration remains consistent throughout a product delivery

Module 2: Explain the reasons for implementing feedback loops wherever possible, focusing on the key benefits around agility and flexibility, to build the right product which is fit for purpose

Module 3: Explain the benefits of visualising aspects such as work, workflow and blockers and be able to highlight why visualising encourages further ad-hoc collaboration

Module 4: Understand why the Business and IT teams must work together daily, to ensure that all goals are clearly aligned

Module 5: Understand why high performing teams are always looking for opportunities to crosslearn and develop new skills

Section 8: Common DevOps Roles

Module 1: Understand the key duties and responsibilities of the following distinct roes within a DevOps team

Module 2: DevOps Evangelist

Module 3: Automation Architect

Module 4: Cloud Infrastructure Engineer

Module 5: Software Developer

Module 6: Software Tester

Module 7: Security Engineer

Module 8: Database Administrator

Module 9: Product Owner

Section 9: Common DevOps Practices and Techniques

Module 1: Explain the practices of both Continuous Integration (CI) and Testing and Deployment, detailing how they work together to formulate the technical excellence required for DevOps delivery teams

Module 2: Explain that Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the process of managing and provisioning data centres through definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration tools

Module 3: Explain the importance of Test Driven Development (TDD) and why this practice allows delivery teams to focus on developing the simplest, most robust solutions possible

Module 4: Understand that a toolchain is a combined set of programming tools, which can be used to perform a complex software development task

Module 5: Understand that distributed version control is a form of version control, where the complete codebase is mirrored on every engineer’s machine

Module 6: Understand the various tools that can be used to ensure effective production monitoring

Module 7: Understand the key differences between public, private and hybrid cloud technologies

Section 10: Relevant Methods and Approaches for DevOps Teams

Module 1: Explain what DevOps topologies and Target Operating Models (TOM) are and why an organisation might use them as part of their DevOps transformation

Module 2: Explain what scrum development delivery is and why this Agile development framework is particularly appropriate for delivery teams within a DevOps-focused organisation

Module 3: Explain how Kanban workflow can be used to identify bottlenecks, improve the overall delivery process and visualise the workflow

Module 4: Understand that transformational leadership is required at all levels of the organisation to successfully transform to a DevOps environment

Module 5: Explain what full-stack engineering is and understand the benefits of building delivery teams consisting of full-stack engineers

Module 6: Understand how collective ownership can form strong teams with focused, shared goals

Module 7: Understand why Continuous Experimentation is vital to ensure that creative solutions are always sought to solve problems presented by the business and that Continuous Experimentation allows for early and safe failure

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge, understanding and some basic application of the following aspects of DevOps: