Doing DevOps

by Richard Bown

Join my newsletter for regular insight and discussion about software delivery, organization and doing effective DevOps. From team setup to maximizing individual performance to tools and techniques and automation.

Monday 25th September - Talk vs Action

As software engineers, we spend a lot of time fixing things. We code. We debug. We troubleshoot. I recently had a conversation with someone which went a little like this: me): Do you have any diagrams of this architecture? dev): No, we prefer not to make pictures because they often become quickly...

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2 days ago • 2 min read

12th September 2023 - Platform teams in DevOps

When you need something done to a system that you work with, can you do it for yourself or do you need to ask someone to help you out? The answer to that question depends on your situation: You might not have the knowledge You might not have the access You might not have the time You might not...

15 days ago • 2 min read

Sunday 27th August - Keeping the Buzz Alive

Energy is high when we return to the office. Any accumulated stress has been taken from our shoulders, and what might have previously caused us anguish is now mere annoyance. But annoyances mount up. How do we get to the end of September, October, or November without that stress building up...

about 1 month ago • 2 min read

Sunday 20th August - What Cost Open Source?

What's the biggest news from the last few weeks? Probably the rumbling debate about "what is open source"? This follows from the decision by Hashicorp to take their open source tools towards a Business Source License (as reported in The Register), which has implications for using these 'free'...

about 1 month ago • 2 min read

Wednesday 26th July - On The Road

It's summer season, and I hope you get to go on holiday and enjoy a few well-deserved days away in a relaxing environment. As I write this, I'm starting to wrap up my work before the summer break. I'm waiting to board a flight to Berlin for the We Are Developers World Congress '23, where I'll...

2 months ago • 2 min read

Saturday 15th July - The "Failing" Team

Do you have or know of a 'failing team'? How is this characterised? Is it: Too slow to deliver features Always distracted by production problems High turnover of staff – particularly domain experts or leads or anyone who has been there “too long” Unable to refactor or redesign due to continuous...

2 months ago • 2 min read

Friday 7th July - Modern Software Leadership

In a recent blog post, I discussed Testing for Microservices, something close to my heart currently. I'm currently finding out first-hand, how often we get persuaded that the thing we're currently doing is the only way we can do that thing. It pays dividends to stop what you're doing and look...

3 months ago • 1 min read

Friday 16th June - Quality is Hard, Measurement is Important

Firstly some news - you might have noticed that the frequency of this newsletter is no longer actually weekly. Due to my current workload, I have less time to write and record things and this newsletter has also suffered. Apologies to my recent subscribers for this but life gets in the way...

3 months ago • 2 min read

Saturday 3rd June - Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools

This is Rule #1 of the Agile Manifesto. In 2023, do we really value individuals and interactions over processes and tools? I think for the most part, we still don't, however we still should try. Why? Read on... This statement says that we should still value processes and tools - but not as highly...

4 months ago • 2 min read

Sunday 21st May - When Consultants Stop Making Sense

I've been following a recent twitter spat between Dave Snowden (Cynefin) and Niels Plaeging (BetaCodex) with a rising sense of alarm and disappointment. They are both experts in the field of complexity science which chiefly occupies itself with trying to explain why in business, management is so...

4 months ago • 1 min read

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