Posts by Year

2024

Cross-functional Teams are NOT for PE Portcos

2 minute read

The appeal of cross-functional teams is seductive. Always shipping, no more waiting. Knowledge spreads. Now we just need to find someone to pay for it… Good luck.

Respect for Production

3 minute read

Respect for production is not about intention or diligence. It’s knowing exactly what is servicing our customers.

Who’s in charge of your infrastructure? You or the computer?

2 minute read

Don’t ask the computer to change for you. To move quickly and safely, declare your intentions.

Hey, Let’s Embed an SRE in that Dev Team!

2 minute read

Get most of the benefit of a fully staffed team for a fraction of the cost? Looks great on paper.

Maintenance like an airplane, not a car

2 minute read

If maintenance is not part of the lifecycle, it’s repeated project work, and deadly for velocity.

GenAI Copilots Exacerbate Problems

2 minute read

Copilots can locally optimize the system, making everything worse in the process.

The Problem with Maintenance Windows and Change Freezes

2 minute read

It seemed like a good idea in 2001, it wasn’t. It’s an anti-pattern for stability.

Do More With the Same, not Less

3 minute read

We can usually handle more work, with the people we already have.

GenAI to Code Faster is Data Center Thinking

2 minute read

Automation is not about doing things faster, it’s about shortening feedback loops.

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2023

Own the problem, not the solution

2 minute read

The solution is the easy part, understanding your problem is hard.

Centers of Excellence vs. Communities of Practice in Transformation

3 minute read

Communities of Practice change an organization, not a silo

Deploying an internal engineering conference

3 minute read

On the path to take companies to the next level, deploy internal conferences to do the same for engineering

A project orientation robs your engineers of Pride of Workmanship

2 minute read

Good leaders enable engineers to feel pride in their work to deliver differentiating results

Show me the tests

3 minute read

Feelings are an important part of engineering. But they don’t replace automated tests.

What your data team should be hiding from you - the database

3 minute read

Most developers shouldn’t know or care about the database technologies.

Deployments not Releases

2 minute read

Turn releases into something for Marketing, not Engineering

We’ll speed up by splitting off a team to handle tickets, now we’re slower

2 minute read

Trying to close more tickets “doesn’t scale”

It’s the system, st*pid

2 minute read

If management wants different outcomes, only they can change the system.

Technical Debt is not a Technical Problem

3 minute read

Known or unknown, the thing about technical debt that leadership needs to understand.

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2022

Agile Abuse

3 minute read

Agile is not to control, measure, or micromanage teams.

(missed) Shift Left

3 minute read

Shifting left is not merely shifting work earlier.

An incomplete list of costs for maintaining marginal products that are not easily measurable in dollars.

2 minute read

Cost of delay, opportunity costs, etc. are not easily calculated

The Secret to Cloud

1 minute read

The cloud isn’t someone elses datacenter but with APIs

The thousand paper cuts team

2 minute read

Having one group do all the tickets seems like a good solution…

Would you rather have a snow day or detention?

2 minute read

As an engineering leader, avoid ad hoc meetings

The Hosting site Rule of 3

2 minute read

When deploying infrastructure, simply costing less can be much, much more

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2021

Cloud Engineering requires code

1 minute read

If you’re trying to understand why your SaaS is slow, look for the SRE coders.

That’s MTBF Thinking

4 minute read

Entropy is real. MTBF thinking tries to suppress what is real. DIE instead.

Automation is the answer, right?

3 minute read

Automation doesn’t replace humans, it enhances them, if we think about it in the right way.

What is the role of the enterprise architect?

3 minute read

The days of the ivory tower enterprise architect are over. Instead, embrace cultural (architectural) evolution.

Check lists, not check off lists

2 minute read

Checklists are not just something to be accomplished. Used properly, they allow us to learn more about our systems.

Yes Felicia, even with Serverless, someone has to do the DevOps

2 minute read

Even with Serverless, one has to obey the cloud provider failure boundaries

Two things that will never work here

4 minute read

When looking to create a more agile business, we can take inspiration from many sources. But ultimately, the problems we need to solve are our own.

Help a good Ops team be world class

3 minute read

If you want your company to be successful, give it something your competitors don’t have. A world class service delivery organization.

What’s the Right Metric for Innovation?

3 minute read

With the right culture, companies whose teams hit “singles” consistently will outperform competitors who are overly reliant on the “home run.”

Get Good at Delivering Software

10 minute read

Survival in the digital age requires an emphasis on execution and speed, enabled by a DevOps approach across the business

The Service Delivery Assessment

4 minute read

There are many options for DevOps assessment, the best one also helps your organization get good at delivering software.

3 Things to know when moving to public cloud

7 minute read

When working with companies on cloud migration, rather than focus on tools or technologies, we focus on fundamentals.

Process is a sign of success

5 minute read

Keeping up with growth in an organization is a GOOD problem. Process is a great solution, if done the right way.

Tech Debt and Company Growth

4 minute read

There are engineering concepts that are very difficult to quantify. Even if we could, does it make sense to aim for zero?

Growth culture in Westrum typology terms

5 minute read

Many teams in the alternative capital markets space talk about the elements of their culture that enable growth. This “conscious inquiry” approach is well known to high performing teams in the DevO...

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2020

Happy Holiday Hack Week

1 minute read

Engineers work hard all year. One of the best ways to be a high performer is to remember, downtime.

On Virtual Conference Speaking

5 minute read

Attending virtual conferences is a new experience. Presenting a virtual conferences requires a very different approach.

Managing work from the front

6 minute read

Being a frontline manager requires a careful negotiation between the business and the engineers. If we focus our efforts on needs, we’ll always be doing the right things.

Make it a spreadsheet problem

8 minute read

Making data-driven business decisions can change the entire equation.

How to bring order to Chaos

7 minute read

When taking charge of an organization characterized by chaos, use these principles to help quickly turn the ship get things under control.

Organizing around the Value Stream

11 minute read

When working on multiple projects at once, it is hard to make good progress. If we organize around the value stream, then we can help the work to flow through our system.

Engineering the hiring of engineers

20 minute read

Engineering is much more than just writing code – it’s about improving a system. By re-engineering our hiring processes, we can bring much-needed efficiency and results to the system.

Distributed, Not Remote

15 minute read

Every company may be a software company, but many software companies are now becoming distributed software companies. By adopting an everyone remote culture, we can hire, empower, and enable employ...

Plan the work, Execute the work

9 minute read

In our jobs, it’s not enough to be busy, we need to be productive. By being deliberate about choosing what to work on, we can make real strides for our product, our businesses and ourselves.

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