toddcretacci.com

Two Worlds, One Lesson

On most days, I’m a Lead DevOps Engineer working on cloud platforms, Kubernetes clusters, and complex infrastructure. On other days, I’m at an ice rink, coaching or watching my son play hockey.

At first glance, these worlds couldn’t be more different. One is built on code, automation, and cloud-native systems. The other is built on skates, teamwork, chemistry and adrenaline. Over time, I started noticing something:

The principles that make a hockey team successful are similar to the ones that build high-performing DevOps teams.

Systems Over Individuals

In hockey, even the most talented player can’t win games alone. You need:

• Defensive structure
• Line coordination
• Communication on the ice
• Puck control / scoring opportunities

A single breakdown in positioning can cost you a goal. In DevOps, it’s no different. You don’t scale success through one talented engineer — you scale it through well-designed systems:

• CI/CD pipelines
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
• Observability and monitoring
• Automated recovery mechanisms

High-performing teams rely on strong systems, not individual heroics.

Practice Like You Play (Shift Left Mentality)

Hockey teams don’t practice casually. Every drill is intentional:

• Power plays
• Defensive rotations
• Game-speed scenarios

When the pressure is on, execution needs to be second nature. In DevOps, this is your shift-left strategy:

• Testing early in the pipeline
• Chaos engineering
• Pre-production validation
• Staging environments that mirror production

If you only “practice” in production, you’ve already lost.

Build environments and workflows that simulate real-world conditions before failure happens.

Pressure Reveals Preparedness

When a game is on the line, you learn a lot about a team:

• Who communicates
• Who panics
• Who trusts the system

The same applies during a production incident.

When systems go down:

• Is your team scrambling?
• Or are they executing a well-defined incident response plan?

High-performing DevOps teams embrace:

• Runbooks
• Postmortems (blameless culture)
• Incident command structures
• Open, honest, positive discussion

Incidents don’t create chaos—they expose it. Preparation is everything.

Communication Is the Real Game

Watch a good hockey team closely. They’re constantly talking, signaling, and anticipating each other.

In DevOps environments, poor communication leads to:

• Misaligned deployments
• Conflicting changes
• Security gaps

Strong teams prioritize:

• Clear documentation
• Async communication (groups chats, tickets, dashboards)
• Cross-team alignment between DevOps, Agile management and Security

Communication isn’t a soft skill—it’s a core reliability feature.

Defense Wins Championships (and Uptime)

In hockey, you won’t win many games without solid defense.

• Solid goaltending
• Defensive awareness
• Limiting opportunities

In DevOps, your “defense” is:

• Monitoring and alerting
• Redundancy and failover
• Security enforcement (DevSecOps)
• Backup and disaster recovery

Too many teams focus only on shipping features (offense) and neglect resilience.

If you don’t invest in defense, your system will eventually fail under pressure.

Every Role Matters

A hockey team isn’t just about scorers:

• Role players bring energy
• Defenseman limit shots on goal
• Goaltenders make the big save

DevOps teams are no different. High-performing teams respect every role:

• Platform engineers
• SREs
• Security engineers
• Developers

Undervaluing these roles increases the chances of an outage or a security breach.

Great teams are built on complementary strengths—not identical skill sets.

Final Thoughts: Leadership Is Coaching

Whether you’re on the ice or dealing with an outage, leadership looks the same:

• Set clear expectations
• Build trust in the system
• Develop your people
• Stay calm under pressure

The best leaders don’t control everything—they create environments where teams can succeed together.

Key Takeaways / Food for Thought

• Systems > individuals
• Practice like production (shift left)
• Prepare for failure before it happens
• Communication drives reliability
• Defense = resilience + uptime
• Every role matters

For me, some of the best leadership lessons haven’t come from conferences or certifications—they’ve come from standing on the bench or behind the glass at a hockey rink.

Whether you’re chasing a puck or deploying to production, winning is always a team effort.