DevOps at is the heart of modern software systems. In my regular newsletter, I dive into the human factors that make successful engineering organizations where teams and platforms thrive at the heart of your socio-technical systems. From leadership to team setup, maximizing performance, tools and techniques.
The Human DevOps - Sunday 8th September 2024 - How To Enjoy Software Engineering
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How was your summer? Does it feel like it's still happening, or are you already back in the thick of things? It's been a bit of both for me over the last few weeks. I've been in and out of holiday mode. The weather is still hot, but the office is in action. Next week, I'm off to London, where I'll be attending the second edition of the Fast Flow Conference with the Team Topologies organisation and heading to SaaS CTO Conference to meet with tech leaders and find out what's got them worried and/or interested. If you missed my article about last year's Fast Flow conference, here's the write-up. I'm wondering how much GenAI will be discussed at these conferences. The continued rhetoric, especially around AI, is a little taxing. I don't believe any business is smart enough to know how to best deploy or take advantage of GenAI other than the vendors already selling it. It's now bundled into Microsoft contracts and forced into our desktops and into our ways of working through Co-Pilot integrations but still, aside from migration project successes, daily use seems almost non-existent. Increasingly, I feel that most consultants are falling into the same camp. There's a lot of froth being generated about it because a lot of money is being thrown at it, but a couple of years later, we're still waiting to see what sticks. For me, the best thing GenAI has produced so far is the real-time generation of Doom. This is no game engine; it is purely GenAI trained on Doom. Last week, I sent Part 1 of my novel Human Software to alpha readers to gather some early feedback. Over the next weeks and months, I'll polish it, still aiming for publication in January 2025. Watch this space for updates! See below for a few articles musing about the nature of consultancy, teams and Philip K. Dick's vacation! Have a great weekend! The Gift of HelplessnessPublished on August 26, 2024 Did Philip K. Dick ever take a vacation? From reading him you wouldn’t think he strayed far from his thoughts. On my vacation I just read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Ubik. These are two classics of his pantheon. I had to ask myself, why had I waited so long to read any… Read More »The Gift of Helplessness
The Limitations of the One-Person ConsultancyPublished on September 5, 2024 In January 2022, I started writing a book about automation. Shortly afterwards, I set up a blog. Every day, I wrote about things that annoyed me about software development and about things that I thought would help me contribute to its improvement. This turned into reading every day about software development. This turned into writing… Read More »The Limitations of the One-Person Consultancy
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Human DevOps
DevOps at is the heart of modern software systems. In my regular newsletter, I dive into the human factors that make successful engineering organizations where teams and platforms thrive at the heart of your socio-technical systems. From leadership to team setup, maximizing performance, tools and techniques.
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...
September took me to London to attend a couple of conferences. The first was the Team Topologies-aligned Fast Flow conference , preceded by a workshop with the Team Topologies core team. I also popped into the Design Museum when I was in the area, an inspirational space if you're ever in London. The Design Museum in Kensington, London. As part of the work I do, I sometimes bump into like-minded folks. While I didn't catch up with them at Fast Flow Conf, a few days ago I enjoyed chatting with...
“Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration... Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.” – Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life You're receiving this because you subscribed to receive updates about "Human Software" or you're on my Human DevOps mailing list. The summer season is upon us. Originally I was aiming to have some early chapters of my debut novel "Human Software" available to...