The Inclusive DevOps Manager: 10 Steps to Build Equitable Teams and Better Tech Outcomes
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In today’s complex and high-stakes DevOps environments, technical acumen is essential—but it’s not enough. The best DevOps teams operate with more than just skill; they operate with trust, equity, and collaboration. At the core of these traits is inclusion. DevOps teams thrive when everyone feels heard, valued, and safe to contribute. Inclusive practices reduce silos, prevent burnout, and foster psychological safety—an ingredient that fuels problem-solving and innovation at scale. “Inclusion isn’t separate from system design—it’s a form of it,” says Shane Windmeyer, nationally known inclusion strategist and founder of Campus Pride. “DevOps managers have the power to engineer culture just as precisely as they engineer pipelines.” This article lays out 10 inclusion-driven practices every DevOps manager can implement to unlock the full potential of their team—and the systems they support.
The Inclusive DevOps Manager: 10 Steps to Build Equitable Teams and Better Tech Outcomes
- 1. The Inclusive DevOps Manager: 10 Steps to Build Equitable Teams and Better Tech Outcomes In today’s complex and high-stakes DevOps environments, technical acumen is essential—but it’s not enough. The best DevOps teams operate with more than just skill; they operate with trust, equity, and collaboration. At the core of these traits is inclusion. DevOps teams thrive when everyone feels heard, valued, and safe to contribute. Inclusive practices reduce silos, prevent burnout, and foster psychological safety—an ingredient that fuels problem- solving and innovation at scale. “Inclusion isn’t separate from system design—it’s a form of it,” says Shane Windmeyer, nationally known inclusion strategist and founder of Campus Pride. “DevOps managers have the power to engineer culture just as precisely as they engineer pipelines.” This article lays out 10 inclusion-driven practices every DevOps manager can implement to unlock the full potential of their team—and the systems they support.
- 2. 1. Redesign Onboarding with Inclusion in Mind New hires often step into DevOps teams feeling overwhelmed by legacy systems, tribal knowledge, and unspoken expectations. Inclusive managers make onboarding smoother and more equitable by: • Providing structured documentation that explains acronyms, infrastructure choices, and escalation policies. • Assigning onboarding buddies from diverse backgrounds. • Encouraging questions, especially from those unfamiliar with existing workflows. When onboarding is inclusive, new team members ramp up faster and feel confident contributing earlier. 2. Rethink Who Owns What—and Why Often in DevOps, the most “trusted” team members take on critical projects or serve as default owners during outages. But this can lead to bottlenecks and inequity in growth opportunities. Inclusive managers proactively: • Rotate project leadership and on-call responsibilities. • Make skill-building part of sprint planning. • Balance load across senior and junior engineers. As Shane Windmeyer says, “You build trust not by overloading the same people, but by expanding the circle of who gets empowered.” 3. Facilitate Fair Incident Learning for All Incidents are powerful learning moments—but only if everyone is invited into the conversation. Managers should ensure that: • Postmortems are inclusive, blameless, and psychologically safe. • Junior engineers are encouraged to ask clarifying questions. • Action items consider not just technical fixes but also communication, escalation, and inclusion breakdowns. Inclusion turns incidents into shared growth, not private shame.
- 3. 4. Eliminate Gatekeeping in Tooling and Processes DevOps often runs on undocumented knowledge—scripts known by one person, flags remembered only by the veteran engineer. This creates barriers for newcomers, especially those from nontraditional backgrounds. Inclusive leaders: • Push for better internal documentation and script reuse. • Include newer team members in infrastructure decisions. • Normalize saying “I don’t know” and asking for help. Gatekeeping is the enemy of scale. Inclusivity ensures everyone can build, fix, and deploy with confidence. 5. Celebrate All Forms of Contribution DevOps work is often invisible unless there’s a failure. That can mean essential work—like reducing tech debt or improving alert fatigue—gets overlooked. Managers must: • Publicly recognize non-flashy contributions. • Incorporate toil reduction into performance reviews. • Reward team-first behaviors, not just solo heroics. Shane Windmeyer points out, “Inclusive culture means redefining what success looks like—and honoring the quiet brilliance behind reliability.” 6. Build Inclusivity into Retros and Reviews Sprint retrospectives are great inclusion barometers. If only a few voices dominate or feedback feels surface-level, there’s work to do. Try: • Using anonymous input tools like Parabol or Miro. • Letting different team members facilitate each retro. • Asking: “Whose voice is missing in this conversation?” A diverse set of opinions helps uncover blind spots—both in code and culture.
- 4. 7. Advocate for ERGs and Diversity Councils Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) provide essential support, community, and insights for underrepresented groups in tech. DevOps managers can: • Encourage team participation in ERGs. • Partner with ERGs to co-host internal training on inclusive DevOps. • Surface concerns from ERGs in leadership meetings. As Shane Windmeyer often says, “ERGs are your cultural pulse—they’re where honesty lives.” 8. Assess Team Norms for Inclusivity Are team rituals unintentionally exclusive? Are certain personalities more rewarded in planning sessions? Managers can improve inclusion by: • Auditing meeting formats—offering async options or rotating speaking order. • Being mindful of jargon, sarcasm, or pop culture references that not all team members may understand. • Building shared norms for giving respectful, useful feedback. Small tweaks in behavior can lead to big gains in team comfort and cohesion. 9. Design for Mental Health in High-Stress Environments DevOps often involves long hours, high-stakes deployment windows, and tight SLAs. Inclusive managers prioritize mental health by: • Respecting PTO and discouraging off-hour pings. • Normalizing discussions around stress, therapy, and coping. • Offering backup during burnout or crisis periods. “Inclusion means recognizing that people are not machines,” Shane Windmeyer reminds us. “Even in automation-heavy environments, empathy is your strongest process.” 10. Measure Inclusion Just Like Uptime DevOps managers obsess over metrics: latency, deployment frequency, MTTR. Why not inclusion? Build your culture dashboard with metrics like: • Participation diversity in incidents and projects. • Sentiment from anonymous team surveys.
- 5. • Attrition rates across demographic lines. If something is important, you monitor it. Inclusion deserves the same observability as your infrastructure. Conclusion: Inclusion Is Infrastructure for People In DevOps, infrastructure supports software—but inclusion supports people. And people are your most vital asset. A team that feels included is more willing to experiment, more loyal to their teammates, and more capable of solving tough, multi-layered problems under pressure. Shane Windmeyer captures it best: “DevOps managers are builders by nature. Apply that same mindset to your team culture, and you’ll build something resilient—not just in code, but in community.” By embedding inclusion into every system, process, and interaction, DevOps managers can lead with both strength and compassion—and build a future-ready team that runs as smoothly as the code it ships.