Many people start learning DevOps, but very few understand what a DevOps engineer actually does inside an organization.
This explanation covers:

✔ Different roles inside a company

✔ How requirements flow from customer → DevOps

✔ What SDLC really looks like in practice

✔ How DevOps fits into this

✔ How Jira is used for day-to-day work

---

🔹 1. Organization Roles & Flow of Requirements

Even though you are a DevOps engineer, you never receive requirements directly from customers.
Requirements flow through many layers before they reach you.

Let’s assume you joined Amazon and you are working in the Amazon Fresh project.

✔ Where do requirements come from?

1️⃣ Customers

Customers give feedback or request features.
Example:

• "Deliver groceries in 15 minutes across all pincodes"

• "Add UPI or Stripe as payment method"

2️⃣ Business Analyst (BA)

• Talks to customers & business teams

• Collects requirements

• Creates BRD (Business Requirements Document)

• Not very technical

3️⃣ Product Manager (PM)

• Looks at business goals, market, competitors

• Decides which features to prioritize

• Example: “15-minute delivery is high priority for next quarter”

4️⃣ Product Owner (PO)

• More technical than PM

• Breaks big requirements into actionable items (Epics)

• Adds acceptance criteria

• Example Epics:

  • Build UI for 15-minute delivery

  • Enable 15-minute service in desktop app

  • Add ON/OFF toggle for customers

5️⃣ Solution Architect (SA)

• Highly technical

• Designs HLD (High Level Design) & LLD (Low Level Design)

• Confirms technical feasibility

• Gives design to developers

---

🔹 2. Scrum Team — Where DevOps Fits

After SA gives designs, real work starts.

A Scrum Team usually includes:

• Developers

• DevOps Engineers

• QA Engineers

• DBAs

• Sometimes Technical Writers

All work together to complete stories.

✔ How DevOps gets work?

Developers analyze requirements and say:

• We need Kubernetes cluster

• We need new repos

• We need CI/CD pipeline

• We need Docker help

• We need RDS setup

These tasks become DevOps stories.

So, DevOps does NOT get tasks directly from PM/PO/BA.
DevOps tasks come from developers & architecture needs.

---

🔹 3. Role of DevOps in SDLC

DevOps participates mainly in:

✔ Implementation

Creating:

• Infrastructure (K8s, EC2, VPC, RDS etc.)

• CI/CD pipelines

• Automation

• Security integration

• Monitoring & logging systems

✔ Improving SDLC Speed

DevOps improves efficiency by:

• Automating tests (CI)

• Automating deployments (CD)

• Reducing manual effort

• Improving security & reliability

---

🔹 4. Jira — How DevOps Uses It

Jira is used for:

• Tracking requirements

• Visualizing team progress

• Updating the status of your tasks

✔ Jira structure:

• Epic → Large feature (from PO)

• Stories → Developer / DevOps tasks

• Sprints → 2–3 week cycles of work

Example Jira flow:

Epic:

“15-minute delivery service”

Dev Story:

“Create UI framework for mobile”

DevOps Story:

“Create Kubernetes cluster”

Each story is assigned to responsible engineers.

DevOps must update progress daily in Comments section:

• Work done today

• Blockers

• Next steps

Management uses this to track progress.

---

🔹 5. Sprint Workflow (Agile/Scrum)

Each 2–3 weeks:

1. Sprint Planning

Team selects which backlog items they will work on.

2. Development + DevOps + QA Work

Everyone progresses their assigned stories.

3. Sprint Review & Retrospective

They check:

• What got done

• What spilled over

• What blocked progress

---

✔ Summary in One Line

A DevOps engineer gets work after requirements flow from customer → BA → PM → PO → SA → Developers, and the actual tasks come to DevOps through Jira stories, mainly created during sprint planning.