We are Polar Squad! Heini Ilmarinen is a DevOps Consultant at Polar Squad, prolific in her work and always looking at the big picture. She also focuses on specific areas of tech; Heini recently became a Microsoft MVP in the Data Platform category. She shared her thoughts about DevOps as a people-centric approach and why tech teams need to operate with a cultural mindset. 

Polar Squad is the first place where my sole focus is DevOps, but elements of it have been present throughout my career. I worked with both architecture and implementation at my previous job. I used to say that architecture is the best role since it combines many aspects: networking, compute, security, access control etc. It was the ideal puzzle with plenty of dimensions to consider.

Switching my career to DevOps became relevant as I discovered Polar Squad. I was worried that DevOps would be doing the same thing repeatedly, which has never suited me well, so I took my time considering their offer.

Of course, I ended up joining Polar Squad. I soon noticed that this fear was completely unfounded. Instead, I found myself in an even more comprehensive role. 

The many faces of DevOps

While I enjoy the broad perspective, DevOps is a discipline where everyone can find the angle that fits them. For me, the platform of choice is Azure; that is the common factor in all my projects. But that’s only a tiny part of the big picture.

DevOps covers architecture and implementation, but also figuring out how the implementations are done and, more importantly, how we work. I love working with the big picture; the more I can help a client with all these aspects, the more I enjoy it. Combining both the human and technical side is where I thrive.

DevOps is not only for generalists. Specialists are always needed: one could focus on people and processes, improving the ways of working in a team, enabling people to enjoy their work more and, in turn, create more value. On the other hand, technical implementations are huge: There are things like Infrastructure as Code with Terraform or focusing on building automation pipelines for application builds and deployments.

There are probably as many flavours of DevOps roles as there are people doing DevOps. In my opinion, that is the beauty of this discipline!

Focusing on the people

I used to say that everyone working in tech needs to have architecture skills because the lines between development, networking, security and infrastructure had become blurred. Nowadays, everyone should have a bit of a DevOps state of mind. It will become even more prevalent in the future as a skill set. We won’t all become DevOps consultants or DevOps engineers, but each role will benefit from a DevOps point of view.

The world of tech is becoming more integrated. Silos and roles are broken down and replaced with full-spectrum thinking. Most importantly, people in tech have become cognizant of the fact that technology is going nowhere without people, with their distinctly human traits and ways of working. Any tech team will be vastly more functional when this is taken into account – and in my book, that’s the essential tenet DevOps has introduced in IT. The tech and the people need to work together, hand in hand.

Heini Ilmarinen is a DevOps consultant, Microsoft MVP and active speaker with a passion for architecture. Her special power is making complex things approachable.