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DevOps is innovating the world of software development, optimising efficiency, improving stability while maintaining a focus on people as it becomes more widely adopted by mainstream tech companies. Its practice consists of a vast range of real world tools as well as abstract concepts. As such, DevOps is not typically taught as an exact subject for Software Developers in third level education and is seen as something that has to be both learned and experienced. Virtual Reality based learning offers the user an immersive simulation of concepts, ideas and experiences. Learning in virtual reality can be achieved through both active participation by the user inside a simulated world or by observing the actions of artificially controlled NPCs. This project aims to utilise this sensory enriched learning environment to teach the practice of DevOps concepts and tools through virtual reality in a simulated 3D world by observing simulated AI characters and participating in VR Games.

This project is set in a virtual IT software company office with AI controlled employees whose decisions are controlled by behavioural trees. Each employee represents a member of one of the four teams along the development process. The player can either observe the DevOps practices of the employees such as the morning scrum meeting, the creation, development, testing and completion of user stories and the interactions with the Kanban board or actively take on the role of one of the virtual employees and complete one of four mini games to move the ticket along the development process.

This project resulted in players being able to experience a hands on approach to DevOps and agile practices. It introduced many of the crucial concepts and tools required in the practice of DevOps and retained the player's attention through the gamification of the process.

Abstact

Objectives

This project utilised the immersive nature of Virtual Reality as a means of teaching DevOps by both participation and observation.

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The core method behind teaching by observing in this project was by creating AI controlled Agents that used a Behaviour Tree to make decisions. These leaf node decisions were fully animated actions taken by the agents. Selection of these leaf nodes was made by the “Selector” and “Sequencer” nodes throughout the behaviour tree. The player learned DevOps practices by observing scrum meetings, interactions with the kanban board and the journey a user story has from inception to development to test to release.

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Materials and Methods

As the idea of teaching DevOps through virtual reality was initially conceived by Brendan O'Reilly this project was a proof of concept for the validity of this methodology for teaching DevOps. The two main conceptual teaching methods in the game are learning by observing and learning by doing.

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The concept of learning by observing in this project was achieved by how the NPCs interacted with each other and the Kanban board. Each NPC had a behaviour tree controlling their decisions. These NPCs demonstrated their role within the development process. The player could observe the product owner creating the user story and then placing it in the backlog on the Kanban board for the developer to pull into the in dev swim lane, work on the ticket and then place it into the tested swimlane. From here it could be observed that the member of the testing team went to test the ticket. Once the test had completed, the ticket was either moved backwards into in dev as it had failed or forwards into the release swimlane where the release team would proceed to work on the tickets final stage and move it into done.

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This simulation is an accurate representation of how a user story goes through the development process including the tools used to display this process. This demonstrates to a student in third level education the step by step procedure of software development that they can observe in its entirety and with the freedom to move to the different teams to see exactly what they are doing as well as being able to move to the Kanban board and fully observe the movement of tickets to different swimlanes depending on their development stage.

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I believe as a proof of concept this aspect of the simulation was a success as it gave an immersive insight into how an IT Company is run and the development process within it. However, where there is room to increase the learning capabilities of the simulation, a more elaborate UI displaying the work progress, the testing having failed or passed etc would give the player more visual signs as to the current state of the development.

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The concept of learning by participation in this project was achieved by how the player interacted with the 3D environment, specifically the tickets on the Kanban board and the mini games in each of the four teams' office areas.

The combination of the player actually being able to pick up a ticket in the simulation, walk over to place it on the Kanban board and watch as the NPCs take the ticket from there and continue the development process gives the player an almost real life experience on how this particular process of DevOps works. I believe the player utilising the tools of DevOps in virtual reality like this, alongside his virtual coworkers is the best way of teaching DevOps and is an area that could be expanded upon greatly.

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The interactive mini games included basketball, matching shapes and colors, observing the current tickets in testing and manually testing them on the computer in the upstairs office and knocking cups with a baseball. It is my evaluation that the more traditional mini games (Basketball and Knock the cups) were the most fun to participate in, however the testing mini game of actually observing the ticket number and proceeding to test it on the computer was the least abstract mini game of the four. I believe that there is a balance that can be struck between fun and realistic development that could increase learning and entertainment simultaneously.

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My final evaluation is that this project serves as a great proof of concept for one of Brendan O'Reilly courses. Bringing DevOps learning to VR has shown to be a fun and insightful learning experience. The many promising ideas inside this project demonstrate viability for teaching DevOps in VR, this also leaves the opportunity open for expanding on them with a full team of developers and making a fully robust commercial product adapted form one of Brendan’s DevOps courses.

Resullts

Conclusions

Virtual Reality is an extremely engaging way of teaching someone through an experience that can be both practically complex as well as conceptually. This can be achieved by both passively observing the simulation or utilising surreal experiences (i.e basketball in the middle of an office) to retain the users attention and enjoyment.

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The world is rapidly moving more and more into the digital space with more people than ever working from home, Virtual Reality learning offers an alternative to real life interactions / inductions that has the least amount of compromises that other forms of communication are burdened with. In a simulated world with real life simulated scenarios accompanied by AI agents you can offer someone a real life learning experience that is unmatched by simply reading a book or watching a video and in many cases impossible to experience without costly travel to the real life locations.

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While VR learning is currently being underutilised in many professional areas we are seeing increased adoption to the format over time and while the VR equipment itself gets cheaper and less cumbersome and employers and tutors see just how beneficial the learning is in this practice the rate of adoption shows all signs of increasing.

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The initial inception of this project was a proof of concept for a commercial VR DevOps learning experience adapted from one of Brendan O'Reilly's DevOps courses. This project has demonstrated there is huge value in bringing DevOps training to virtual reality. This would also mean that Brendan’s courses on DevOps could be much more widely distributed as they could be simply downloaded or rented out to colleges. This could also facilitate remote teaching as more companies look to move their teaching online in light of the logistical complications of covid-19.

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References

1. Virtual Reality-Based Daily Scrum Meetings - Murat Yilmaz
2. Unity XR Framework / XR Interaction Toolkit
3. Behavior trees for AI: How they work - Chris Simpson

Acknowledgement & contact

Dr. Martin Harrigan who oversaw the project and offered excellent resources, expert insight and time throughout its duration.

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Gerry Moloney for organising meetings that aided my research.

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Brendan O’Reilly for his resources / professional knowledge of DevOps.

The core objective of the project is to present a fully immersive VR simulation demonstrating the practice of DevOps within a company. This core goal is achieved through the following objectives:

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• Creating a 3D representation of a software development company.
• Creating AI controlled agents that each fulfill a role throughout the development process
• Product Owner/Scrum Master
• Developer
• Tester
• Release
• Creating an environment that can be interacted and navigated by a player using a VR headset and controllers
• Creating a mini game for each stage of development that the player can participate in to take on the role of one of the team members and contribute to the development process
• Creating an interactive KanBan board which will act as the main hub of the game in which the player and the AI controlled agents can interact with.

IT Carlow

Tom Lloyd

Teaching DevOps Through Virtual Reality

The core method teaching by participating in this project was by allowing the VR controlled player to physically participate in the development process. The player could take on the role of any member of the development team and thus have to take on their workload. To gamify this process to make it a truly engaging experience the player had to complete the mini game relevant to the role he/she currently occupied.

Once these games were completed the player actively took part in the agile process by moving his ticket along the Kanban board.

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