Higher Education and the Future DevOps Workforce

Macro and micro

Charlie Betz

CharlesTBetz

char@dm-academy.com

www.lean4it.com

What?

The importance of Higher EducationCurrent challenges in educating the digital workforceHow computing curricula are definedThe Digital Curricula reportA modern digital course

Acknowledging MECC

Total post secondary enrollment, fall ‘14 20,663,464Higher education staff 3,969,226Annual expenditures $520 billionMarket value of endowment funds $539 billionPhysical plant ~$500 billonAnnual U.S. GDP for comparison $18.6 trillion

Scale of the Education System

Higher Ed by Institution Type

PublicPrivate non-profitPrivate for-profitNon-degree

71%19%

8%2%

30 colleges, 7 universities, 54 locations400.000 students$2 Billion annual budget5th largest higher education provider in the US

Minnesota State Colleges & Universities

Workforce Survey

159 faculty and industry professionals, primarily US

Agile skills

62% consider as a factor, and

50% of those started doing so within the last 3 years

Workforce Survey

DevOps

78% of industry respondents view Continuous Delivery as either

emerging or mainstream

45% of schools do not cover Continuous Delivery at all

Workforce SurveyWorkforce

65% of education professionals think education system isproviding a

well prepared digital workforce

32% of industry respondents agree

The View from Startup Community

There is almost twice as much demand for the product programmer… than there is for programmers focused on hard technical problems.

“”

Ammon Bartram, Y-Combinator

University of Minnesota

What could possibly go wrong?

Carlson School of Management

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Version Control

Andrew Clay Shafer:

“the foundation of every other Agile technical practice”

do not provide practical exposure57%

The Players

How Curricula are Defined

HTTP://WWW.ACM.ORG/EDUCATION/CURRICULA-RECOMMENDATIONS

For example

CoreFundamentals of computationAlgorithms & data structuresAutomataOperating systemsCompilers & languages

AppliedData managementNetworkingSecurity Distributed systemsUser interaction (useful)

ContextualProject managementRequirements managementAnalysis & architectureSoftware quality & processBusiness context (MIS)

MissingProduct management (it’s over in Marketing. Sort

of.)Operational topics (full lifecycle & execution issues)Organization and cultureRealistic experiential labs & simulations: full-

lifecycle, full-stackINFORMATICS?

Core vs. Contextual Courses

Agile/DevOps importance, definitions, backgroundFive Competency Areas

1. Dynamic infrastructure and operations2. Continuous delivery3. Product management4. Resource and execution5. Organization and culture

Recommendations for course adaptationsDigital labs and simulations

http://dynamicit.education

The Report

Dynamic Infrastructure and Operations

From physical, hand-configured infrastructure to virtual, software-defined infrastructure

Continuous Delivery

From “code complete” to “full lifecycle”; from batch handoffs to ongoing digital value production

Product Management

From deliverable-focused project management to outcome-focused product management

Resource and Execution

From execution models resulting in overburden, multitasking and poor IT delivery, to concern for value, flaw, and work in process

Organization and Culture

From inattention to culture, to recognition of culture´s central role in digital product delivery effectiveness

“Vocationalism?”

Course updatesRequirementsQAArch Usability/UI design

New coursesProduct managementOperationsCulture & organization

Digital labs and simulationsDigital pipelinesSoftware-defined networkingChaos engineeringSite reliability engineering

Pedagogy

© 2016, Charles T Betz

Teaching Digital

The Stack

The Lifecycle

Enterprise

Team of teams

Team

Founder

THESCALING PROBLEM

What do we need? Why?

When do we need it?

How is it changing?

A New Progression: Scaling

The 3 Dimensions of Digital Learning

Lifecycle

Stack

Scale

SEIS 664, “IT Delivery”

Calavera

Advance-IT Minnesota sponsoring online portal at dynamicit.education

“As long as it benefits Minnesota, we are happy if it benefits everyone else!”

Report still considered preliminary at 1.0Feedback being solicited for version 2.0,

to be release Q2 2017 in time for fall course development

Going Forward

There are specific leversState legislative processes/committee (e.g. Higher Education and Workforce)State economic development agenciesState high tech lobbying associationsProgram and institutional advisory boards

They are (or should be!) always interested in hearing from practitionersIf you don’t pull on these levers, someone else will

What you can do

Dynamic IT report: http://dynamicit.educationDynamic IT LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12018370 ACM/IEEE/AIS curricula guidance

http://www.acm.org/education/curricula-recommendations Charles Betz resources:

Digital/Agile/DevOps management text https://github.com/dm-academy/aitm

Calavera platformhttps://github.com/dm-academy/Calavera

Course labshttps://github.com/dm-academy

Resources

Thank you!

CharlesTBetz

char@dm-academy.com

www.lean4it.com

For more information:

If you Google “Walking Skeleton”