Yes, You Can Learn DevOps
It’s Doable
The course is designed to enable non-programmers to learn these things. To achieve that, it provides a gentle on-ramp of the technologies, techniques, and languages that are used. The language used in the course is Java, and “bash” scripting is used too. You will be taught enough about those to be able to do the course exercises.
Doable, But Still Advanced — Goes Beyond Most DevOps Courses
This course consists of a series of modules that teach how to design, build, deploy, and test microservice-based systems. Unlike most DevOps courses, its focus is particularly on integration, which is where most problems are. Thus, instead of stopping at the “build pipeline”, you create an integration pipeline. You also learn how to do most of that locally, so that you are not always waiting for cloud deployments for things that could have been done locally – if only you had designed them with that in mind.
However, this is not a beginner course: it goes farther than most DevOps courses. It is the real thing. If you are a non-technical person, you will be able to speak with confidence when talking to programmers; if you are technical, you will find that the course provides you with rich new perspectives about having a cloud-independent built chain and local testing.
How It Works
The course is self-paced. You access our learning platform at Agile2.Academy to watch the videos, reference the included slides as needed, and try the exercises. You are allotted one live support session per module. (There are 20 modules.) Each support session is a half hour. That is enough for most people. You can obtain additional support sessions — see below under Cost. In addition, you can send emails to the instructor and for questions that are easy to answer or fix, the instructor will respond with advice at no cost. You can also post questions in the course forum.
Where It Leaves You
At the completion of this course you will have built, deployed, and created automated integration tests for clusters of microservices. You will also have learned how to create a comprehensive testing strategy – something that is missing from virtually all other courses on this subject. There is an overview of the test strategy approach in this article: https://agile.org.uk/rational-testing-agile-approach/.
You will have concrete memories of having done these things, and you will have all of your code and designs to refer back to. The certificate of completion lists the syllabus — all the topics that you will have learned.
Time Commitment
The total time commitment to complete all modules is from 30-50 hours for most people. If you are an experienced developer, you will progress quickly and will need less support, and the included support sessions can then be used to discuss strategies and ideas.
Cost
The total cost for all modules is $1150. Only the optional modules can be skipped, as the others build on each other, and your codebase builds. (You will also be required to create an AWS account and use AWS. The charges that you can expect should be less than $50, but it can vary.) You can also take subsets of the modules — see Go à la carte below.
If you need additional live support, it is available at $60 for a half hour call. These are booked in the Inquiries & Support page. There is also an online class forum in which you can ask questions. The instructor and other participants can respond. You can also ask a coding assistant, such as Github CoPilot or Replit to help you to figure out why code does not work.
How This Differs From a Cloud Certification
Cloud certifications are great to have. However, they are entirely in terms of their own tools. That’s not a good thing, because they want you to become dependent on their tools. For a lot of tasks, it is important to make things tool-independent: we explain and illustrate that very thoroughly in this course. Relying on a cloud vendor’s tools for everything is very expensive, and also slows you down because you will end up waiting for cloud services for things that you could have done locally on your own computer.
“This is AWESOME training. Real hands on, but don't need to be a developer to implement and understand DevOps. It was the most relevant training I ever took.” - Rick Vance, Agile Coach. LinkedIn profile.
“…every part of the course is exactly as described. No fluff, no marketing hype, just hard-core, DEVOPS-centric insights into the technologies that influence and enable DEVOPS adoption in many organizations. [It] …will not only teach you ‘how things work’ but also what is broken about some of the more commonly-used toolsets…you will be able to guide your teams into avoiding many common pitfalls and keep their focus on consistent quality.” - Huet Landry, Agile Coach. LinkedIn profile.
“I have been taking the DevOps for Agile Coaches class…so I could become technically stronger as a coach. This has already had an impact on my ability to improve teams. The class is a walk-through of how to incorporate DevOps into the Agile framework you are using by getting you to actually do all the thing you see your teams doing from a technical perspective. This include hands on work setting up AWS, Docker, creating sample code and tests and running it to see if it works….I believe if any coach wants to get to the next level this is a great course to help you do that.” - David Pointer, Agile Coach. LinkedIn profile.
“This is a unique course tailored for Agile coaches (even non-technical ones) to embrace the concepts of DevOps transformation. It is very practical, you learn all the aspects of DevOps through tools, implementation, concepts, and best practices…this is not an easy course that you can pass on the fly. It is an equivalent of a college course with significant time investment and homework 😊. It is all worth it – you will be transformed through this course to a new level in your career!” - Anastasiya Fomin, Director of Quality Engineering & Agile Program Management Office. LinkedIn profile.
Or go à la carte
Or instead of signing up for the whole course, select a track, or even one module at a time. Click here for the packages that are available.
These are the modules that you progress through.
These are not shallow tours: they go deep, and you create and deploy real things.
The completion certificate lists what you learned.
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Instructions here
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Do you want to arrange something custom, or classes for just your organization? Contact us so that we can discuss your precise needs.
System Requirements
Any Windows computer, Mac (Intel or Apple silicon), or Intel-based Linux computer will work. If you have an ARM-based Windows computer please let us know ahead of time so that we can determine if that will work.
You must have system administration privilege on your computer. (If you own the machine, then you have system administration privilege.)
To perform the activities of the course, these are required in your computer:
At least 8Gb RAM — 16Gb is better.
At least 50Gb of free disc space.
Virtualization is enabled. For consumer computers it usually is. If you are using a company computer, please check that virtualization is enabled: if not, ask to enable it. Enabling virtualization requires system administration privilege: if you own the computer, then you have that. Usually software developers have administration privilege on their machines.
Also, your computer must be on a network that is not restricted in terms of which sites it can access. In particular, you must be able to access our Gitlab repos, various tools such as Apache foundation tools, Maven repositories, and Dockerhub. If your network is restricted, let us know, and we will try to find a workaround.
