Software systems rule our world. My regular newsletter explores the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming.
Friday 2nd February - The DevOps Team
It's February. So, what's going on with your project? What's happening in your organisation? Are people happy? Are improvements being made?
Over the last few weeks, I had a few thoughts about improving from the ground up. I work day-to-day as a DevOps engineer, and from there, I can shape interactions we have as a team with other teams and also what products (or platforms) we offer. I feel lucky to have this role as I get to work with many developers with different challenges in multiple languages and frameworks, and I have a significant degree of freedom on what to do next. I feel this is a win-win. I get to do what I enjoy most, and the organisation gets to have organised help for its less expired dev teams. However, some people might think that a DevOps team shouldn't exist.
In fact, many experts see a DevOps team as an antipattern.
But if your organisation is still trying to get to grips with the concept of the cloud, then a DevOps team can be invaluable. A team comprising people who can both speak as a developer and understand systems and operating systems, networks and more advanced cloud ideas can help and support development teams get to the next level - even if that means just learning to google more effectively for solutions to problems.
DevOps is about pragmatism, getting things done when you need to, and taking ownership. A DevOps team can help you achieve that by providing coaching, platforms, and a crystal clear focus on the customer- in this case, the software product development community.
Therefore I wrote a couple of articles over the last few weeks. One about how to let your best techies (your architects) loose among your dev teams. And one about how to build lasting psychological safey in your organisation.
I hope you get something out of them.
Have a great weekend,
-- Richard
The Value of Socially Driven Architecture
Published on February 1, 2024
Even if it seems like the right thing to do, just putting people to work is not always the most effective way of improving your systems. Can we start to understand the value of a more socially driven architecture? Here’s a scenario. The software architect is at work. After reviewing the current state of the… Read More »The Value of Socially Driven Architecture
Building Resilience: How to form lasting psychological safety
Published on January 15, 2024
This is the first of a two-part post about building individual resilience in software engineering. Today is Blue Monday. According to experts this is mentally the toughest day of the year for knowledge workers in the Northern Hemisphere. The low point of the year for many of us due to the long dark days, the… Read More »Building Resilience: How to form lasting psychological safety
The Human Software
Software systems rule our world. My regular newsletter explores the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming.
The third working week of the year starts tomorrow, and, as Danny the Drug Dealer says in "Withnail and I", there are going to be a lot of refugees. The years take on familiar shapes when it comes to corporate whim. We have our budget-setting periods, our summer holidays, and perhaps even our closed or quiet periods around Christmas. Predictability, as comforting as it is, can be equally disquieting. Are we here again? As marketing guru Seth Godin says, your comfort zone is not the place to...
Did you know that Kate Bush was only 19 when she embarked on her first solo tour of the UK? Not only had she been writing music from a very young age but at that point she had been working on some of the songs on her first album "The Kick Inside" for more than four years. Clearly even at 19 she is a driven person and has been from a while - creating and forming the world around her as she goes - a force of nature. How do we choose to impose ourselves on the world? As we head to the end of...
The period after the summer holiday is always a busy one. What have you been up to? A lot of what has been on my mind is my mind. And not only my mind but the minds of those around me. There is an increasing neurodivergent component in my family, so for me, it's been really hard to think or read or write about anything else! Against this backdrop, I've been back to working as a DevOps engineer, writing Terraform, Python and Ansible and having design discussions. While I still enjoy it, I...