A proposal for integrating devops into software engineering curricula

Abstract

The “2017 State of DevOps Report” asserts that 27% of its respondents work on devops teams, an increase of almost 23% from 2016 and almost 69% from the 2015. Devops practices are intended to improve an organization’s software development throughput by reducing the cycle time needed for a software change to reach its users. Although the skills needed for effective devops are in demand, it is challenging to integrate it into a academic curriculum for several reasons. First, software development curricula often only take students through the delivery stage of software development and do not spend meaningful time on operational activities, making it difficult to recruit faculty with the requisite IT operations experience. Second, many of the applications and their environments that can most benefit from devops are extremely complex, making it difficult to provide an appropriate learning environment. Third, many requirements for successful devops are not technical but instead emphasize the human and organizational aspects of our craft. Fourth, for many students, the problems addressed by devops are abstract. In this paper we look at these challenges in more detail and review one proposal for integrating devops into existing curricula in light of current devops maturity models, disciplines, and industry trends.