I already wrote about how to get started with the Opscode Chef Platform. In this article I want to show you a very elegant way to deploy a Ruby on Rails stack with Chef. One of the strengths of Chef is the decent set of available cookbooks. @jtimberman does an especially excellent job in writing … Continue reading How to Deploy Ruby on Rails With The Opscode Chef Application Cookbook
Do you have a DevOps Culture?
A lot of Sysadmins and developers all over the world write, meet and talk about DevOps: How to collaborate better so we can deliver business value faster. The aim of DevOps is to get rid of the traditional way of thinking in silos inherent to development and operations. But how can You find out whether … Continue reading Do you have a DevOps Culture?
LogicMonitor: My Virtual SysAdmin
I'd recently ordered a new round of servers and was positively dreading having to setup Nagios & Munin on them. This is where the fact that I'm a "born & raised" developer really shines through. The configuration of Nagios is simply beyond me. No matter how much documentation I read, I just can't get all … Continue reading LogicMonitor: My Virtual SysAdmin
The Irresistable Pull To Self Organization
Every organization has to deal with a mix of ongoing and project oriented work. But, even if you structure your teams into departments to optimize ongoing work, they keep trying to self organize into project focused teams. Matrix Management vs Project Organization There are the regular tasks and chores, and there are the bigger undertakings … Continue reading The Irresistable Pull To Self Organization
Far Future Expires Headers For Ruby On Rails With Nginx
Browsers load static images from your website again and again if your web server does not send an expires header with a date far in the future. To avoid that unnecessary traffic on your servers and unnecessary load times for your users, it's a good idea to let your nginx send those expires headers. But, … Continue reading Far Future Expires Headers For Ruby On Rails With Nginx
Getting Started With The Opscode Chef Platform – Configuration Management In The Cloud
In "The Moving Parts of Opscode Chef" there was an interesting discussion about the need of a highly available chef server if you want to use opscode chef as your configuration management tool of choice. Especially for small to medium sized enviroments running your own chef server is overkill. If you don't want to use … Continue reading Getting Started With The Opscode Chef Platform – Configuration Management In The Cloud
Scrum alone won’t cut it
Scrum is a great framework for organizing projects. It defines exact roles and procedures to structure your work environment. You gain a lot of visibility and you empower your teams. All that is great. But in software development or operations it's not sufficient. You need an underlying set of values and practices which drive quality … Continue reading Scrum alone won’t cut it
Empower Your Team – You Won’t Regret It
It's hard to find the right structure for any organization. A lot of existing management wisdom comes from a time when you had to organize a physical work force. However, with today's "knowledge workers" those structures don't work as nicely anymore. Everyone needs to prioritize Every developer or devops has to prioritize the current work … Continue reading Empower Your Team – You Won’t Regret It
Size Matters – Why You Should Prefer Small User Stories
If you have a lot of big user stories, your velocity will jump up and down wildly. This makes it extremely difficult to tell when a user story will be done. Breaking down your huge user stories into smaller ones will help you smooth the flow and give you a clearer picture. User Stories Start … Continue reading Size Matters – Why You Should Prefer Small User Stories
How To Estimate User Stories When Using PivotalTracker
For a team new to agile software development, estimating user stories is not easy. The team is used to estimate tasks in hours and days, and know they're never right anyways. So why bother? In agile, estimating user stories relative to each other using story points can give you a fact based idea about what … Continue reading How To Estimate User Stories When Using PivotalTracker
