"Hey Dan, could you deploy the coolPics branch to test? Sorry for the bother." "No problem, man. Tell me the SHA and I'll deploy it." I had been having this conversation 4-5 times a day for a couple of weeks now. Being a huge fan of continuous integration, I wondered how to automate this. Why … Continue reading How Hubot Automation Crystallized Trust within our Development Team
Test Driven Chef Cookbooks With Meez
When cooking a new dish, things get out of control if you try to manage too many things at once You might face a similar situation when trying to write a new Chef cookbook. Getting your arms around all those tools and frameworks needed to write solid, tested cookbooks gets you spinning. You need to … Continue reading Test Driven Chef Cookbooks With Meez
DevOps Dudes: Aligning Goals
Their bosses should've decided on a shared goal before they declared that DevOps organization... See the older DevOps Dudes cartoons: The DevOps Dudes DevOps Dudes: Meerkat
Why you need to customize your agile methods
You're starting off with a new laptop. The OS is installed, but using it feels awkward. Nothing looks like it used to on your previous one. You're really frustrated how slow you move around just because you're missing your beloved customizations. A few days later you feel the flow again. You've tweaked your OS and … Continue reading Why you need to customize your agile methods
If Devs Own Testing, Ops Owns the Environment
The devs are all writing automated tests and some are even experimenting with TDD. Congrats! But what happens when the build server breaks? Who's taking care that Continuous Integration is running smoothly? Seems to be an awful lot of red in there... Unlike writing the first basic tests, CI is hard. Did the test fail … Continue reading If Devs Own Testing, Ops Owns the Environment
Leadership In the Online Age: A Reflection On Team-Building
In the last decade of my career, I've been extremely fortunate to have worked with some of the best people I've ever known. A big contributing factor to this is the tech-savvy, expatriate culture that exists here in Munich as well as the type of people you typically find abroad who have left their home … Continue reading Leadership In the Online Age: A Reflection On Team-Building
Why Teaching Developers To Test Is A Good Investment
Test a developer's software and you'll find bugs. Teach a developer to test and they can release their software. A bit of a twist on the old fish and eating maxim, but the same idea: teaching a skill enables self-reliance and self-confidence. And, while it's harder than quickly doing someone a big favor, teaching is … Continue reading Why Teaching Developers To Test Is A Good Investment
How Value Stream Mapping can speed up your cycle time from years to weeks
When switching on the oxygen pumps, there was an explosion on board of the Apollo 13 space craft. A short circuit in a small module led to an explosion rendering most of the space craft useless. For days, the crew frantically worked in cramped quarters trying to return to Earth. Tensions ran high, but, instead … Continue reading How Value Stream Mapping can speed up your cycle time from years to weeks
How To Break Departmental Silos By Forming Feature Teams
Imagine a seven year old playing the piano. She hits every note like it's the only one, taking long breaks between each note. The play drags and listening to the singular notes is a pain. Instead of music, all you hear is a bunch of individual sounds, each one rivaling with the others to be … Continue reading How To Break Departmental Silos By Forming Feature Teams
Stop Scaring Your Customers and Speed Up Releases
"But our customers don't want 10 new versions a year. The last release alone had over 600 bugs!" retorts the hotline manager. "How about a small update with just a handful of bugs?" Your big-bang release is scary. It's full of issues and weird, new features that nobody understands. It requires documentation and training and … Continue reading Stop Scaring Your Customers and Speed Up Releases
Agile Web Operations 