Certified DevOps Leader (DOL)

About this course

The DevOps Leader course is a unique and practical experience for participants who want to take a transformational leadership approach and make an impact within their organization by implementing DevOps. Leading people through a cultural transformation requires new skills, innovative thinking, and transformational leadership. Leaders up, down and across the IT organization must align and collaborate to break down silos and evolve the organization.
The course highlights the human dynamics of cultural change and equips participants with practices, methods, and tools to engage people across the DevOps spectrum through the use of real-life scenarios and case studies. Upon completion of the course, participants will have tangible takeaways to leverage when back in the office such as understanding Value Stream Mapping.
The course was developed by leveraging key DevOps leadership sources to extract real-life best practices in leading DevOps initiatives, such as the Spotify Squad Model, and has been designed to teach the key differences and emerging practices for cultural transformation through leadership in a fast-paced DevOps and Agile environment.
This certification positions learners to successfully complete the DevOps Leader exam.
Audience profile
The target audience for the DevOps Leader course are professionals including:
  • Anyone starting or leading a DevOps cultural transformation program
  • Anyone interested in modern IT leadership and organizational change approaches
  • Business Managers
  • Business Stakeholders
  • Change Agents
  • Consultants
  • DevOps Consultants
  • DevOps Engineers
  • IT Directors
  • IT Managers
  • IT Team Leaders
  • Lean Coaches
  • Practitioners
  • Product Owners
  • Scrum Masters
  • System Integrators
  • Tool Providers

At course completion

The learning objectives for DOL include a practical understanding of:
  • DevOps and time to market
  • The business and IT perspectives
  • Key differences between DevOps IT and traditional IT
  • Planning and organizing
  • Understanding performance and culture
  • Measurement differences
  • Designing a DevOps organization
  • Focusing on what matters
  • Ideas for organizing workflows
  • Sharing information
  • Defining meaningful metrics
  • Value stream mapping
  • The Spotify Squad model
  • Managing culture change
  • Popular tools and key practices
  • Putting it all together

Examination

Successfully passing (65%) the 90-minute examination, consisting of 40 multiple-choice questions, leads to the candidate’s designation as a certified DevOps Leader (DOL). The certification is governed and maintained by the DevOps Institute.

Course Introduction
  • Course Goals
  • Course Agenda
DevOps and Time
  • What Is DevOps?
  • Why Do DevOps
  • Companies Doing DevOps
  • The Magic Equation
Key Differences Between DevOps IT and Traditional IT
  • What Sets DevOps IT apart from Traditional IT
  • How DevOps IT is Organized Differently
  • How to Perform to a Different Standard
  • How to Use Different Measurements
Becoming a DevOps organization
  • Transformational Leadership
  • Redesigning An Organization for DevOps
  • Design Principles
  • Focus
  • Work
  • Information
  • Metrics
Value Stream Mapping
  • What is Value Stream Mapping?
  • Why Do We Need to Use this Framework?
  • Types of Maps
  • How to Create a Value Stream Map?
  • Types of Data to Collect
  • How to Handle Exceptions
Value Stream Mapping Exercise
Squad Organizational Model
  • Conway’s Law
  • The Problem with Silos
  • Spotify’s Squad Organization Model (Structure, Roles)
  • Squads
  • Tribes
  • Chapters
  • Guilds
  • How to Reorganize in Order to Move to this Model
Managing Cultural Change
  • What is Culture and How Does it Impact Performance?
  • Types of IT Culture
  • Cultural Traits of a DevOps Organization
  • How to Manage Change
Culture and its Impact on Performance
  • Types of IT Culture
  • What is a DevOps Culture
  • How To Manage Change
  • The Three Phases Of Change
  • Types of Changes That Need to be Implemented
Popular DevOps Tools and Practices
  • DevOps Tools Periodic Table
  • Top DevOps Tool Categories
  • Common and Popular Practices
Building a Business Case
Bringing it all Together
Additional Sources of Information
Exam Preparations
  • Exam Requirements, Question Weighting, and Terminology List
  • Sample Exam Review

The DevOps Foundation certification is a recomended (but not required) prerequisite for DevOps Leader to ensure participants are aligned with the baseline DevOps definitions and principles.