March was a big month for the Humans of DevOps. The Upskilling 2020: Enterprise DevOps Skills Report was released, DevOps Ambassadors discussed upskilling practices and initiatives during a global CrowdChat, and numerous Ambassadors shared their insights and advice with the DevOps community. 

We also announced our Open Testing program. Open testing removes the prerequisite of formal courseware to achieve DevOps certifications. While we encourage structured, instructor-led courses offered through DevOps Institute and our Global Education Partners, we wanted to honor the many learning styles of the Humans of DevOps by offering an Open Testing option. You can learn more about open testing and all our certifications here. 

Jayne Groll, Founder and CEO of DevOps Institute, also released three new episodes of the Humans of DevOps podcast. One episode highlighting the Upskilling 2020 Report with Eveline Oehrlich, another discussing Containers, Microservices, and Kubernetes with Tracy Ragan of DeployHub, and another providing a global perspective on DevOps with Dheeraj Nayal. If you have listened to them yet, you can listen to every episode here. 

We also highlighted many of our DevOps Ambassadors. They shared advice, challenges and insights into the world of DevOps. For example, Niladri Choudhuri shared his key takeaways from the Upskilling 2020 Report in Upskilling 2020: The Enterprise DevOps Skills Report from DevOps Institute while Feisal Ismail shared DevOps Lessons from Shakira. If DevOps was a song, what song do you think it would be? 

Daniel Oh, principal technical product marketing manager at Red Hat and ambassador at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), also shared his own advice for upskilling with the Humans of DevOps here. And BMK Lakshminarayanan shared why data is critical to DevOps in Our DevOps Journey is Incomplete Without Data. 

We learned a lot from our DevOps Ambassadors, volunteers from across the globe who actively work to empower the global DevOps community through the SKIL framework: Skills, Knowledge, Ideas and Learning. You can find all our Ambassadors here and follow them on Twitter here. We can’t wait to see what insights they contribute in the coming months. Stay tuned!

See more highlights below from our DevOps Ambassadors: 

• 4 things Cloud-Native Java must provide by Daniel Oh
• Learning Core Behaviors: How Can Leaders Influence DevOps Adoption Success? by Romnick Acabado
• Career and Upskilling Advice with DevOps Institute Global Ambassador, Romnick Acabado
• 8 Key Challenges in Adopting DevOps: Part 1 by Najib Radzuan
• DevOps is the New Potato! by Savinder Puri
• Reflections on Upskilling with DevOps Institute Global Ambassador, Sanjeev Sharma
• COVID-19 has Made Working Remotely More Commonplace, Now What? by Eric Chapman
• Ambassador of the Week — Niladri Choudhuri

Want more interaction and learning from DevOps leaders? DevOps Institute will offer several Virtual SKILup Days throughout 2020. Virtual SKILup Days are micro-conferences dedicated to a singular topic with six hours of continuous learning, including how-to sessions from industry leaders, networking opportunities and a virtual exhibit hall. 

The first Virtual SKILup Day will take place on April 30 and focuses on Value Stream Management (VSM). As the Humans of DevOps, we are constantly adjusting and adapting to new ways of working. VSM has become increasingly important for visibility into progress, ensuring the business is moving forward, and adjusting along the way. Thus, we declare April as Value Stream Management month! 

Learn more and save your seat for the first Virtual SKILup Day focused on VSM here.