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Reliability & Operations 90 days 2-3 hours/day updated 2026-06-01

ITOps 90-Day Learning Path

Master ITOps in 90 days — ITIL processes, asset management, change control, service desk, and IT automation. Build the systematic operations skills that keep enterprise infrastructure healthy.

What ITOps means

IT Operations (ITOps) encompasses the processes, tools, and teams responsible for maintaining and managing an organization’s IT infrastructure and services. ITOps covers the full service lifecycle from provisioning and configuration through monitoring, incident response, change management, and eventual decommissioning. Modern ITOps integrates automation and observability to reduce manual effort and improve service quality.

Who should follow this path

  • IT administrators moving to modern operations practices
  • Help desk engineers growing into infrastructure roles
  • Systems administrators adopting DevOps tooling
  • IT managers modernizing operations workflows

Prerequisites

  • Basic networking concepts (TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP)
  • Windows or Linux system administration basics
  • Familiarity with ticketing systems
  • Understanding of IT service management concepts

The 90-day plan

Daily study recommendation: 2-3 hours/day, six days a week. Consistency beats intensity — block the time in your calendar like a meeting.

Days 1–15: Foundation

  • ITIL 4 framework and service management concepts
  • IT service catalog design
  • Incident, problem, and change management processes
  • Configuration Management Database (CMDB) fundamentals
  • SLA and OLA definition for IT services

Outcome: Map an organization’s IT services to ITIL processes and design a basic CMDB.

Days 16–30: Core concepts

  • Asset lifecycle management
  • IT inventory and discovery tools (Lansweeper, Nmap)
  • Endpoint management with Intune or Jamf
  • Software license management
  • Hardware refresh planning and budgeting

Outcome: Deploy automated asset discovery and establish an IT inventory management process.

Days 31–45: Tools and workflows

  • IT monitoring with Nagios, Zabbix, or PRTG
  • Network monitoring and SNMP fundamentals
  • Log aggregation with Splunk or ELK stack
  • IT alerting and escalation policies
  • Service desk metrics: MTTR, FCR, and ticket SLAs

Outcome: Implement infrastructure monitoring and establish service desk performance baselines.

Days 46–60: Hands-on projects

  • IT automation with PowerShell and Ansible
  • Patch management automation workflows
  • Runbook automation with ServiceNow
  • Self-service IT portal implementation
  • User provisioning and deprovisioning automation

Outcome: Automate patch management and user lifecycle workflows reducing manual ticket volume.

Days 61–75: Advanced practices

  • IT disaster recovery planning and testing
  • Backup verification automation
  • Business continuity documentation
  • IT security controls and system hardening
  • Vendor and contract management

Outcome: Design and test an IT disaster recovery plan with automated backup verification.

Days 76–90: Portfolio, interview & certification prep

  • Portfolio: IT service management modernization case study
  • ITOps interview preparation
  • ITIL 4 Foundation certification exam prep
  • ServiceNow Fundamentals exam prep
  • Communicating IT improvements to business stakeholders

Outcome: Complete ITIL 4 Foundation prep and demonstrate measurable ITOps modernization outcomes.

Weekly outcomes at a glance

PhaseOutcome
Days 1–15Map an organization’s IT services to ITIL processes and design a basic CMDB.
Days 16–30Deploy automated asset discovery and establish an IT inventory management process.
Days 31–45Implement infrastructure monitoring and establish service desk performance baselines.
Days 46–60Automate patch management and user lifecycle workflows reducing manual ticket volume.
Days 61–75Design and test an IT disaster recovery plan with automated backup verification.
Days 76–90Complete ITIL 4 Foundation prep and demonstrate measurable ITOps modernization outcomes.

Tools to learn

  • ServiceNow
  • Jira Service Management
  • Ansible
  • Zabbix
  • Nagios
  • Splunk
  • Microsoft Intune
  • PowerShell
  • Lansweeper
  • PagerDuty

Labs to practice

Mini projects

  • Implement an automated patch management pipeline with compliance reporting
  • Build a self-service IT portal using ServiceNow with approval workflows
  • Create an IT asset inventory system with automated discovery and lifecycle tracking

Interview questions to prepare

  1. Explain the difference between incident management and problem management in ITIL.
  2. How do you prioritize incidents in a service desk queue?
  3. What is a CMDB and why is keeping it accurate difficult?
  4. How do you implement a change freeze and communicate it to stakeholders?
  5. Describe how you would automate user onboarding and offboarding.
  6. What metrics would you use to assess the health of an IT operations team?
  7. How would you build a self-service catalog to reduce ticket volume?

Certification suggestions

  • ITIL 4 Foundation — DevOps School
  • CompTIA Network+ — CompTIA
  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate — Microsoft
  • ServiceNow Certified System Administrator — ServiceNow

Browse the full certification registry for exam details and official links.

Free resources

// instructor-led option

Prefer live, guided training with mentors and certification support? DevOpsSchool.com runs paid instructor-led programs that pair well with this free path.

Explore paid training on DevOpsSchool.com ↗