Embedding the Principles and Practices of DevOps into the IT Education

Abstract

With the rapid advancements of Information Technology (IT) in enterprises, the existing IT educational methods in universities are struggling to meet the new functional and technical requirements. This paper offers an overview of DevOps principles and practices and proposes an effective method for augmenting IT education with these concepts. To achieve this, a conceptual framework needs to be developed where the principles and practice of DevOps can be easily embedded into existing IT education courses. In addition to this framework, an end-to-end pipeline and toolchains for efficient execution of selected IT education programs need to be developed. These pipelines must support the working culture and enhance the productivity of students, professors, and teaching boards while still being in line with the requirements of enterprises. The proposed model is developed from six aspects of DevOps which are continuous development, continuous integration, continuous testing, packaging and staging, release automation, and performance/relevance monitoring. Through the embedding of DevOps culture and practices into existing IT education, we expect to advance the relevance of the education-industry flow while providing a platform for continual learning and experimentation. The proposed framework was implemented and evaluated at two IT courses at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade.

Keywords

• devops
• it education
• industry relevance
• it courses
• continuous development
• continuous integration
• continuous testing
• packaging and staging
• release automation
• performance monitoring