2025
Creating a Timeline
How I created a timeline for myself to start visualising my DevOps journey.
Making the decision to transition into DevOps is one thing. Turning that decision into something actionable is another.
I've learned that ambition without structure tends to fade. So instead of vaguely “learning DevOps,” I decided to create a timeline for myself. A roadmap that gives direction and a sense of progress.
The five phases
Laying the Theoretical Foundation
Before building things, understand the landscape.
- Following structured courses (like KodeKloud)
- Attending conferences such as DevOpsCon
- Learning from peers in my network
- Exploring CI/CD, containers, cloud and IaC
Building a Single Node k3s Cluster
Theory turns into practice. Start small and local.
- Understand how Kubernetes works under the hood
- Deploy simple workloads
- Experiment with networking, storage and configuration
- Break things and learn how to fix them
Applying Knowledge Through Side Projects
Real learning happens when you build things that matter to you.
- Kubernetes demo app running on local k3s cluster
- CI/CD pipelines tied to real repositories
- Dockerized test frameworks from my QA background
- Infrastructure as Code with Terraform
- Observability stack and security monitoring experiments
Building a Multi-Node Proxmox Cluster
Level up into real-world infrastructure complexity.
- Bootstrap a 3-node k3s cluster (1 server, 2 agents)
- Provision and manage nodes with Proxmox as the hypervisor
- Configure a proper CNI (Cilium) with network policies
- Set up a distributed storage solution
- Automate provisioning with Ansible or Terraform
- Set up ArgoCD for GitOps-driven continuous delivery
- Deploy Kyverno for policy enforcement and admission control
- Implement RBAC, network policies and secrets management
- Deploy a full monitoring stack (Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager)
Gaining Certifications
Validate my knowledge with certifications.
- Fill knowledge gaps
- Structure what I've learned
- Prove the fundamentals to myself and others
Why this timeline works
It balances
Each phase builds on the last
Final thoughts
This timeline isn't about rushing into DevOps. It's about growing into it.
By breaking the journey into clear phases, I can stay focused while still enjoying the process of learning. And maybe most importantly, it keeps things fun.
Because at the end of the day, that's what drew me here in the first place: the challenge, the complexity and the feeling that there's always more to learn.