Getting to know our product manager over the last couple weeks, I got the impression he was a bit overwhelmed with all the favors, bugs and feature requests he was faced with every day. So, I asked him where he maintained all these different things and he pulled up a spreadsheet. When I asked him … Continue reading Static Backlogs, Delivery Dates and “Done”
Author: Dan Ackerson
New Job at NetDoktor
On Monday, I started my new job as CTO of NetDoktor.de GmbH. Its the #1 health portal over here in Germany (ala WebMD or Revolution Health in the States). One of my main tasks will be to bring a more agile approach to their software development. As they currently outsource the website development, I once … Continue reading New Job at NetDoktor
Improving Operations with Agile
Last week, I suggested that SysAdmins are much more agile than we give them credit for. But, when it comes to organizing their day-to-day work they need just as much help as the rest of us. Today, I want to talk about how agile methodologies work just as well in operations as they do in … Continue reading Improving Operations with Agile
What do Sysadmins really think about Agile?
Every workplace has one, and even if you contract it out, you still have to interact with a System Administrator to get important IT work done. If you're introducing Agile methodologies at your company, you might have run into a brick wall of sorts back there in that corner room - the Ops guys. They … Continue reading What do Sysadmins really think about Agile?
Pimp my Website: Downsizing your Web Pages
In the current economic downturn, everyone's keeping an extra close eye on the bottom line and looking for ways to save money. Let's compare the bytes of data on your network to water droplets and your website to a leaky faucet. You know you should take an afternoon and fix the damn thing, but something … Continue reading Pimp my Website: Downsizing your Web Pages
Pimp my Website: Streamlining Your Content
Hopefully, you have a better idea about how (un)performant and (un)optimized your website is after going through some of the tools I introduced you to last week. You've made the first step in getting to know more about how your site is really served to your users. Now, I'll start walking you through some of … Continue reading Pimp my Website: Streamlining Your Content
Website Performance Optimization
Since Steve Souders's published "High Performance Websites" back in September 2007, a lot of people finally sat up and took notice of front-end web performance optimization techniques. Over a year later, you'd hope that most folks had figured out the basics like compressing content, using expires headers and reducing requests. Unfortunately, it seems that multi-core … Continue reading Website Performance Optimization
Visible Ops: Continuous Improvement
In my last posts, I've introduced you to the IT Process Institute's "Visible Ops Handbook" which presents IT managers and system administrators with a clear road map of how to adopt best practices within their organizations and how to work smarter instead of harder. The first three phases outlined include change management, configuration management, and … Continue reading Visible Ops: Continuous Improvement
Visible Ops: If At First You Don’t Succeed, Build, Build Again
By now you should have a better understanding of how your data center is setup and exactly what's all in there. You've been carefully monitoring changes to this environment and are ready to take it to the next level. The "Visible Ops Handbook" introduces the concept of "production fuses" : when things go wrong with … Continue reading Visible Ops: If At First You Don’t Succeed, Build, Build Again
Visible Ops: Setting Up Your Configuration Management Database
The next step to get a better grip on your environment is figuring out exactly what kind of production configurations you have running out there. If you've ever caught yourself walking through the data center and wondering just what in the hell those servers in the back corner are for, this phase will be quite … Continue reading Visible Ops: Setting Up Your Configuration Management Database
