I'm moving to a DevOps team next month and want to make good use of the time I have before starting. I've spent about five years working in infrastructure and systems, mainly with VMware/vSphere, Windows and Linux administration, networking, troubleshooting, NetApp storage, PowerShell automation, monitoring, backups, and day-to-day infrastructure operations.
I've also had some beginner-level exposure to Docker, Kubernetes, Git, GitLab, Argo CD, Ansible, and Terraform through labs and small experiments, but I'm not yet experienced with them in production.
For anyone who moved from sysadmin or infrastructure work into DevOps, what would you prioritize learning first? I'd especially appreciate a practical, structured course or learning path—through a course platform, video series, or hands-on projects—that focuses on skills I'm likely to use on the job.
5 Answers
Don’t focus only on the tools—learn how developers work and what problems the team is trying to solve. Understanding branching, pull requests, testing, releases, application configuration, and deployment workflows will help you apply your infrastructure skills where they have the most impact.
Your background is a good match for DevOps, particularly the operations and reliability side. It may also be useful to build some developer experience alongside the tooling—writing and testing a small application, understanding its lifecycle, and learning how developers consume infrastructure. That will make collaboration with application teams much easier.
You already have a stronger foundation than many people starting out. Rather than trying to learn every DevOps tool at once, use a broad roadmap to identify the major areas, then work backward from the technologies your new team actually uses. Your infrastructure, troubleshooting, and automation experience will transfer well.
A single end-to-end project will probably teach you more than several disconnected courses. For example, provision an environment with Terraform, package a small application with Docker, deploy it to Kubernetes or another platform, add a CI/CD pipeline, and include logging and monitoring. Connecting the pieces will make the individual tools much easier to understand.
Talk to your new team before choosing a course. Find out what cloud platform, source control, CI/CD system, infrastructure-as-code tools, deployment platform, and monitoring stack they use, along with any internal documentation. DevOps varies a lot between companies, so learning tools you’ll never touch may not be the best use of your month.
The CI/CD platform is especially worth finding out early. Teams often change tools, but understanding how their pipelines build, test, deploy, and roll back applications will help you become productive quickly. Reaching out proactively should also make a good impression.