The True Capacity of Your Engineering Team
How to Avoid Burnout and Overload by Correctly Measuring Your Engineering Team Capacity
DevOps for Blockchain Systems
Blockchain has become the enfant terrible of the tech world. As any conceptually new tech it poses more questions than it provides answers. But the buzz around it is more than justified. Beside the crypto-gold rush that’s definitely been the main hype-driver, this is a technology that provides a promise of a different, decentralized future. A promise of distributed, global trust based on science and technology — not on military force, geographical proximity or national identity. It remains to be proven if such trust is possible, but if it is — world economy is up for a total paradigm shift.
Continuous Lifecycle London 2017
Last week I had the honour to speak about ChatOps at Continuous Lifecycle conference in London. The conference is organised by The Register and heise Developer and is dedicated to all things DevOps and Continuous Software Delivery. There were 2 days of talks and one day of workshops. Regretfully I couldn’t attend the last day, but I heard some of the workshops were really great. The Venue The venue was great! Situated right in the historical centre of London city, a few steps away from Big Ben, the QEII Center has a breathtaking view and a lot of space. The talks took place in 3 rooms : one large auditorium and 2 — smaller ones. It is quite hard to predict which talks will attract the most audience and it was hit and miss this time around too. Some talks were over-crowded while others felt a bit empty. Between the talks everybody gathered…
DevOps is a Myth
(Practitioner’s Reflections on The DevOps Handbook) The Holy Wars of DevOps Yet another argument explodes online around the ‘true nature of DevOps’, around ‘what DevOps really means’ or around ‘what DevOps is not’. At each conference I attend we talk about DevOps culture, DevOps mindset and DevOps ways. All confirming one single truth – DevOps is a myth. Now don’t get me wrong – in no way is this a negation of its validity or importance. As Y.N.Harrari shows so eloquently in his book ‘Sapiens’ – myths were the forming power in the development of humankind. It is in fact our ability to collectively believe in these non-objective, imagined realities that allows us to collaborate at large scale, to coordinate our actions, to build pyramids, temples, cities and roads. There’s a Handbook! I am writing this while finishing the exceptionally well written “DevOps Handbook”. If you really want to know…
Infrastructure As Code Revisited
One can not talk about modern software delivery without mentioning Infrastructure As Code (IAC). It’s one of the cornerstones of DevOps. It turns ops into part-time coders and devs into part-time ops. IAC is undoubtedly a powerful concept – it has enabled the shift to giant-scale data centers, clouds and has made a lot of lives easier. Numerous tools (generally referred to as DevOps tools) have appeared in the last decade to allow codified infrastructures. And even tools that originally relied on a user-friendly GUI (and probably owe much of their success to the GUI) are now putting more emphasis on switching to codified flows (I am talking about Jenkins 2.0 of course, with it’s enhanced support of delivery pipeline-as-code). IAC is easy to explain and has its clear benefits: It allows automation of manual tasks (and thus cost reduction) Brings speed of execution Allows version control for infrastructure configuration…
Devops Enablers vs. DevOps Engineers
A lot has been said and written in these last 3 years in an attempt to define what DevOps really stands for. One thing most of us agree upon is that DevOps is not a job definition – it’s a culture, a mindset, a software manufacturing practice which is focused on breaking the walls between the developers and the operations. And it is a very cool and hip practice, one that everybody likes and everybody wants a piece of. So job postings for “DevOps engineers” pop up each day like mushrooms after a summer rain. And we adapt ourselves to the new realities and start calling ourselves DevOps engineers, even though half a year ago we were called CM, or integrators, or system engineers, or whatever. I myself just signed a new contract for “DevOps” role. And yes – I’m going to do DevOps. But I know that if we…
What’s with the DevOps hype?
Someone asked at one of the forums if the DevOps hype is justified – after all “it’s something we’ve been doing for the last 20 years”… It’s a good question and here’s what I have to say: DevOps isn’t new, but the hype around it is all about the ever-growing amount and speed of change in the development process. We’ve seen large shifts in development methodologies and release strategies over the last 5-10 years – towards shorter cycles, continuous delivery, automated testing, etc. New tools and practices have been established to deal with these new requirements and organizations now clearly see the competitive advantage they provide. So yes, the discipline itself isn’t new, but it’s role in the software manufacturing process is becoming more visible and acknowledged than ever. That’s what the hype is about. //