The Moving Parts Managing your infrastructure with Opscode Chef involves a few moving parts you need to be aware of. As I found it quite hard to differentiate, I want to share the basics with you: Chef server There you manage all your nodes and roles. The chef server distributes cookbooks to the nodes. Chef … Continue reading Automated Configuration Management With Opscode Chef: The Basic Moving Parts
Scrum What? New Community Edited Q&A Site About Agile, Lean, Kanban and Scurm
A lot of people I meet are interested in agile software development. Either they've heard about it or they participate in projects which use Scrum, Kanban, or Extreme Programming. They wonder whether it makes sense to do pair programming, which Kanban tools to use, how to get started with test driven development or how to … Continue reading Scrum What? New Community Edited Q&A Site About Agile, Lean, Kanban and Scurm
Xen: Debian Lenny Dom0 with Ubuntu Lucid Guest
It sounds like a simple thing to do: As Ubuntu does not have support for Xen by default, I wanted to run a Debian Lenny Server as Xen host (Dom0) with Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) LTS as guest (DomU). But there were some obstacles: debootstrap does not support Ubuntu Lucid by default Ubuntu Lucid cannot boot … Continue reading Xen: Debian Lenny Dom0 with Ubuntu Lucid Guest
Why Automated Testing is a Must for DevOps
You've heard a lot about test automation. But why is it so important? It's a lot of additional effort and adds lots of code which needs to be maintained later, right? DevOps Favors Continuous Releases One of the important parts of any DevOps process is the regular release of working software. In Scrum, iterations tend … Continue reading Why Automated Testing is a Must for DevOps
Launch Dates – The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Setting a launch date for your new web site is common practice. Even though nobody knows what exactly the site might look like and even less how much effort it will be to launch it, the release date is fixed. This can have positive and negative effects. The Good The positive side of having a … Continue reading Launch Dates – The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Simple Database Updates with Ruby
As our PHP development team grows we've begun running into the familiar problem of database migrations. And not only between local dev environments, but deployments too. It's nice that Susie told Joe Developer about her latest db changes so he can continue work on his feature, but if I need to do a release early … Continue reading Simple Database Updates with Ruby
What have we done for you today?
I'm a firm believer of release early and often. If there's more than 10 new commits in our code repository awaiting release, I start to get uncomfortable. Whether it's extra "inventory sitting on our shelves" instead of in your browser, or the uncertainty of "going live" with a bunch of new stuff and then running … Continue reading What have we done for you today?
Self-brewed complexity is evil – fight it!
It's amazing to see again and again how teams complicate their lives without any necessity. They dream up features "urgently" required by their imaginary customers and then start a death march to launch them at an arbitrary, self-invented date. Why is it so hard to simplify things and get going? Let's have a look at … Continue reading Self-brewed complexity is evil – fight it!
A/B Testing with Webrat
It all began a year ago. We wanted to introduce a new navigation bar, but gradually, gaining feedback (and confidence) that it was the right upgrade for our users. My idea at that time was a random cookie which would show 20% of our users the new navigation while giving them a separate google analytics … Continue reading A/B Testing with Webrat
How to guide a team through a crisis
No matter whether your team is self-organizing or not, when the shit hits the fan, they'll need strict rules and close guiding to manage the crisis. Clear Responsibilities First, everyone has to know exactly what they're supposed to do. Whether it's restarting crashed servers, capturing log outputs, or just staying the hell out of the … Continue reading How to guide a team through a crisis
