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To Build a Fire

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Achieving DevOps

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Abstract

Autumn arrives, and the team is celebrating a year into their journey. They can claim some real victories. They’ve really stepped up their game with monitoring and gathering metrics; just in the past few months, they’ve investigated some cool new SaaS-based monitoring services, which has improved their visibility into their application’s actual performance in the field. Better yet, they’re actually caring about the right things; showing business-facing metrics like their order processing rate is helping everyone visualize the part they’re playing in a very long delivery chain. But they are still lacking executive support they need; how can they get the protection to finish the next step of their journey?

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Notes

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    “Want to develop great microservices? Reorganize your team,” Neil Gehani. Mesosphere, unknown date. https://techbeacon.com/want-develop-great-microservices-reorganize-your-team . He calls a cross functional delivery team of 6–12 people a “build-and-run” team, which we kind of like.

  2. 2.

    “Microservices,” James Lewis and Martin Fowler. MartinFowler.com, 3/25/2014. https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html .

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  4. 4.

    “Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems,” Sam Newman. O’Reilly Media; 2/20/2015. ISBN-10: 1491950358, ISBN-13: 978-1491950357.

  5. 5.

    Interview of Ryan Comingdeer by Dave Harrison, see Appendix.

  6. 6.

    “Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems,” Sam Newman. O’Reilly Media; 2/20/2015. ISBN-10: 1491950358, ISBN-13: 978-1491950357.

  7. 7.

    Interview of Seth Vargo by Dave Harrison, see Appendix.

  8. 8.

    “Production-Ready Microservices: Building Standardized Systems Across an Engineering Organization,” Susan Fowler. O’Reilly, 12/1/2016. ISBN-10: 1491965975, ISBN-13: 978-1491965979. Susan points out that there’s always a balance between speed and safety; the key is to start with a clear goal in mind. Her thoughts around alerts and dashboarding are very well thought out. Even better, it hits perhaps the one true weak point of microservices right on the head: the need for governance. She found it most effective to have a direct prelaunch overview with the development team going over the design on a whiteboard; within 10 minutes, it will become apparent if the solution was truly production-ready. If you have only one book to read on microservices – this is it.

  9. 9.

    Interview of Michael Stahnke by Dave Harrison, see Appendix.

  10. 10.

    Interview of Ryan Comingdeer by Dave Harrison, see Appendix.

  11. 11.

    “The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition,” Frederick P. Brooks Jr. Addison-Wesley Professional, 8/12/1995. ISBN-10: 9780201835953, ISBN-13: 978-0201835953.

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    “The Only Good Reason to Adopt Microservices,” Vijay Gill. LightStep.com, 7/19/2018. https://lightstep.com/blog/the-only-good-reason-to-adopt-microservices/ .

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    “Stevey’s Google Platforms Rant,” Steve Yegge. Gist.github.com, 1/11/2011. https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 . A now legendary rant about platforms by a software architect that worked early on at both Google and Amazon. Steve did NOT get fired for his little “reply all” oopsie, shockingly – which tells you a lot about the positive traits of Google’s culture right there.

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    “StranglerApplication,” Martin Fowler. MartinFowler.com, 6/29/2004. www.martinfowler.com/bliki/StranglerApplication.html .

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    “Production-Ready Microservices: Building Standardized Systems Across an Engineering Organization,” Susan Fowler. O’Reilly, 12/1/2016. ISBN-10: 1491965975, ISBN-13: 978-1491965979.

  17. 17.

    “Microservices, IoT, and Azure: Leveraging DevOps and Microservice Architecture to deliver SaaS Solutions,” Bob Familiar.  Apress, 10/20/2015. ISBN-10: 9781484212769, ISBN-13: 978-1484212769.  The best book we’ve seen out there on IoT in the Microsoft space, by a long shot. Bob Familiar does a terrific job of explaining IoT and microservices in context.

  18. 18.

    “Building Products at SoundCloud – Part I: Dealing with the Monolith,” Phil Calcado. Soundcloud, 6/11/2014. https://developers.soundcloud.com/blog/building-products-at-soundcloud-part-1-dealing-with-the-monolith .

  19. 19.

    “Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems,” Sam Newman. O’Reilly Media; 2/20/2015. ISBN-10: 1491950358, ISBN-13: 978-1491950357.

  20. 20.

    “Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale,” Jez Humble, Joanne Molesky, Barry O’Reilly. O’Reilly Media, 1/3/2015. ISBN-10: 1449368425, ISBN-13: 978-1449368425.

  21. 21.

    “The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge,” Vijay Govindarajan, Chris Trimble. Harvard Business Review, 9/2/2010. ISBN-10: 1422166961, ISBN-13: 978-1422166963.

  22. 22.

    “The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations,” Gene Kim, Patrick Dubois, John Willis, Jez Humble. IT Revolution Press, 10/6/2016, ISBN-10: 1942788002, ISBN-13: 978-1942788003.

  23. 23.

    Interview of Michael Stahnke by Dave Harrison, see Appendix.

  24. 24.

    “An Interview with Jez Humble on Continuous Delivery, Engineering Culture, and Making Decisions,” Kimbre Lancaster. split.io, 8/16/2018. www.split.io/blog/jez-humble-interview-decisions-2018/ .

  25. 25.

    Interview of Ryan Comingdeer by Dave Harrison, see Appendix.

  26. 26.

    “Up and Down the Communications Ladder,” Bruce Harriman. Harvard Business Review, 9/1/1974. https://hbr.org/1974/09/up-and-down-the-communications-ladder . The original HBR study from 1969. We’ll call out one key point – that the feedback program must not be an endcap, but product visible results.

  27. 27.

    Interview with Rob England by Dave Harrison, see Appendix.

  28. 28.

    Interview of Sam Guckenheimer by Dave Harrison, see Appendix.

  29. 29.

    “The Site Reliability Workbook: Practical Ways to Implement SRE,” edited by Betsy Beyer, Niall Richard Murphy, David K. Rensin, Kent Kawahara, Stephen Thorne. O’Reilly Media, 8/4/2018. ISBN-10: 1492029505, ISBN-13: 978-1492029502.

  30. 30.

    “Adopting Microservices at Netflix: Lessons for Team and Process Design,” Tony Mauro. Nginx, 3/10/2015. www.nginx.com/blog/adopting-microservices-at-netflix-lessons-for-team-and-process-design/ .  A very good article, covering Netflix’s use of the OODA loop in optimizing for speed vs. efficiency, and creating a high-freedom, high-responsibility culture with less process.

  31. 31.

    “Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations,” Nicole Forsgren PhD, Jez Humble, Gene Kim. IT Revolution Press, 3/27/2018. ISBN-10: 1942788339, ISBN-13: 978-1942788331.

  32. 32.

    Interview of Sam Guckenheimer by Dave Harrison, see Appendix.

  33. 33.

    “The DevOps Adoption Playbook: A Guide to Adopting DevOps in a Multi-Speed IT Enterprise,” Sanjeev Sharma. Wiley, 2/28/2017. ISBN-10: 9781119308744, ISBN-13: 978-1119308744.

  34. 34.

    “It Takes Dev and Ops to Make DevOps,” Russ Collier. DevOpsOnWindows.com, 7/26/2013. www.devopsonwindows.com/it-takes-dev-and-ops-to-make-devops/ .

  35. 35.

    “Workplace Management,” Taiichi Ohno. McGraw-Hill Education, 12/11/2002. ISBN-10: 9780071808019, ISBN-13: 978-0071808019.

  36. 36.

    “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,” Carol Dweck. Random House, 2/28/2006. ISBN-10: 1400062756, ISBN-13: 978-1400062751.

  37. 37.

    Interview of Nigel Kersten by Dave Harrison, see Appendix.

  38. 38.

    Interview of Michael Goetz by Dave Harrison, see Appendix.

  39. 39.

    Interview of Nathen Harvey by Dave Harrison, see Appendix.

  40. 40.

    Interview of Betsy Byer / Stephen Thorne by Dave Harrison, see Appendix.

  41. 41.

    “Self Forming Teams at Scale,” Brian Harry. Microsoft Developer Blog, 7/24/2015. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2015/07/24/self-forming-teams-at-scale/ .

  42. 42.

    “DevOps and Change Agents: Common Themes,” Eliza Earnshaw. Puppet, 12/3/2014. https://puppet.com/blog/devops-and-change-agents-common-themes .

  43. 43.

    “The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations,” Gene Kim, Patrick Dubois, John Willis, Jez Humble. IT Revolution Press, 10/6/2016, ISBN-10: 1942788002, ISBN-13: 978-1942788003.

  44. 44.

    “Taylorism,” unattributed author(s). Encyclopaedia Britannica, unknown date. www.britannica.com/science/Taylorism .

  45. 45.

    “Neo Taylorism or DevOps Anti Patterns,” John Willis. IT Revolution, 10/23/2012. https://itrevolution.com/neo-taylorism-or-devops-anti-patterns .

  46. 46.

    “The Origin of Society,” unattributed author(s). Modern Matriarchal Societies, unknown date. http://mmstudies.com/top-down .

  47. 47.

    “Annual State of DevOps Report,” unattributed author(s). Puppet Labs, 2017. https://puppetlabs.com/2017-devops-report .

  48. 48.

    “Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale,” Jez Humble, Joanne Molesky, Barry O’Reilly. O’Reilly Media, 1/3/2015. ISBN-10: 1449368425, ISBN-13: 978-1449368425.

  49. 49.

    “The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development,” Donald Reinertsen. Celeritas Publishing, 1/1/2009. ISBN-10: 1935401009, ISBN-13: 978-1935401001.

  50. 50.

    “The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development,” Jeffrey Liker, Gary Convis. McGraw-Hill Education, 11/7/2011. ISBN-10: 0071780793; ISBN-13: 978-0071780797.

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  1. Madras, OR, USA

    Dave Harrison

  2. Montclair, NJ, USA

    Knox Lively

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  2. Knox Lively
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© 2019 Dave Harrison and Knox Lively

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Harrison, D., Lively, K. (2019). To Build a Fire. In: Achieving DevOps. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4388-6_7

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