Tiny DevOps

Gorjan Jovanoski — Saving the planet, one server at a time

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 05:00:00 +0100

Gorjan Jovanoski is the co-founder of AirCare, the mobile app that helps you know what you breathe. He joins me to tell the story of founding AirCare, and share some of the surprises, good and bad, along the way.

In this episode...

What is AirCare, and what does it do for you?
What is its business model?
AirCare's origin story
AirCare's tech stack: Flutter, PHP, MongoDB, DigitalOcian
Request volume and seasonality
How to aggregate 35,000 data sources in PHP
Detecting and responding to a DoS attack
The software development cycle at AirCare
Observability at AirCare
Scaling challenges along the way
Next steps and objectives

Guest
Gorjan Jovanoski
AirCare web site

Oshri Cohen — What kind of CTO do you need?

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 05:00:00 +0100

Oshri Cohen is a fractional CTO with a diverse background, currently working with four companies. He joins me on the show to cut through some of the confusion surrounding the Chief Technical Officer role.

In this episode:

The four phases of the CTO role
How often can the same person satisfy the needs of all four phases? (Spoiler: Very rarely)
How often can a founding CTO succeed in all four phases?
A good CTO focuses on his or her strengths, and hires out the rest
What lead Oshri to start as a fCTO
Why many, perhaps most, early-stage startups don't need a full-time CTO
Why a development agency is like a mischievous genie
Why developers love working with a fCTO
What could you do with the 150k you'd save by hiring a fCTO instead of a full-time CTO?
Tips for becoming an fCTO yourself

Guest
Oshri Cohen
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oshricohen/
Website: oshricohen.me

Paul Cothenet — Observations on observability

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 05:00:00 +0100

Paul Cothenet of Patch.io joins me this time to discuss war stories implementing observabillity at two small startups.

In this episode…
- How to choose an obervabillity tool/platform
- Why AWS doesn't provide the best observability platform
- Teaching the team to use observability
- How to convince stakeholders that observability is valuable
- What would you miss the most if your observability platform was no longer available?
- The business value of a good observability solution
- Making observability metrics easy for management to use
- What does it all cost?
- Advice for getting started

Resources
Rands Leadership Slack: https://randsinrepose.com/welcome-to-rands-leadership-slack/

Guest
Paul Cothenet
Twitter: @paulcothenet
Company, and jobs: patch.io

James McShane — Is Kubernetes right for your small company?

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 05:00:00 +0200

James McShane is the Engineering Director at SuperOrbital and has been working with Kubernetes for about 6 years, in a large number of environments. He joins the show today to help unpack whether Kubernetes is a good choice for your small company.

- What is Kubernetes, and what problems does it solve for you?
- Choosing Kubernetes means choosing a set of problems.
- Which application architectures match well with Kubernetes?
- Which problems Kubernetes doesn't solve well for you.
- How to handle your application data layer when starting with Kubernetes
- Some of the differences between the big three's Kubernetes offerings
- Should you hire experienced Kubernetes engineers before adopting Kubernetes?
- Why is Kubernetes controversial, and how can a newcomer cut through the hype?
- Common newbie mistakes
- How does price figure into the decision to choose Kubernetes or not?
- How to learn Kubernetes if your employer isn't using it

Guest
James McShane
Twitter: @jmcshane
Engineering Director at SuperOrbital.io

Dave Mangot — Should you deploy on Fridays?

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 05:00:00 +0200

Dave Mangot is a speaker, author, teacher, and Silicon Valley veteran. His focus is helping private equity portofolio companies use their technology organization to maximize growth, and he joins me today to discuss the contentious topic of Friday deployments and why you definitely should do them and why you definitely should not do them. Confused?

In this episode

Mores are not moratoriums
Shaming is inappropriate, on both sides of the issue
Every outage is unexpected, nobody knows what might go wrong
Friday deployment should be an informed choice
Why small batch deployments are important
Deploying features vs other changes
You should be able to deploy at any time, but separate that from choosing to deploy at any time
Why more QA can be worse than less QA
If deployment hurts, or causes fear, do it more
Responding to failures when they do occur
Building an accurate mental model of your system

Resources
Article: Deploy on Fridays, or Don't
Book: Continuous Delivery by Jez Humble and Dave Farley
Talk: How Complex Systems Fail by Richard Cook (Velocity 2012)
Book: Project to Product by Mik Kersten
Book: Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming

Guest
Dave Mangot
Web site: https://www.mangoteque.com/
LinkedIn: mangot
Twitter: @davemangot

Tod Hansmann — Observability as an engineering enabler

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 09:00:00 +0200

Problem solver Tod Hansmann of Catalyst joins me to discuss "observability": What it is, why it means different things to different people, and how to get started if it's new for you.

In this episode:

What is observability (o11y)?
What can observability do for you?
What metrics should you track?
How does observability relate to logging, alerting, monitoring, and other practices?
Who should be responsbile for obervability?
How heavily should upper management be involved?
How does observability relate to culture?
CI/CD as a prerequisite for observability
Why metrics are better than logs
Surprising metrics that can be important
The relationship between monitoring and automated testing
Good observability as an enabler for canary deployments, test in production, and other practices
How to define service level objectives
How do you define "uptime"
How to address corner cases
Why being on call is desireable

Guest
Tod Hansmann
Twitter: @todpunk
LinkedIn: Tod Hansmann
Catalyst

Resources
Book: Site Reliability Engineering

Jason Adam — A conversation about trunk-based development

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 05:00:00 +0200

Jason Adam is a software with a non-traditional background in biology, business development, and data analytics. Now he's active as a developer, and on the lookout for proven practices he can introduce to his team. On this episode we talk about Trunk-Based Development, and the related topics of continuous integration and deployment, infrastruture as code, and much more.

In this episode

How Trunk-based development differs from GitFlow and other branching strategies
Two flavors of trunk-based development
How Trunk-based development fits into the larger picture of continuous integration and continuous delivery
Techniques for working in smaller batches
How test-driven development enhances trunk-based development
Using feature flags for smaller batches
How to keep pull requests small
Cherry-picking small changes out of a larger pull request
How Infrastructure-as-Code works with CI and CD

Resources

Book: Continuous Delivery by Jez Humble and Dave Farley
Book: Domain-Driven Design by Eric Evans
Book: Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers
Book: Clean Architecture by Robert Martin

Guest
Jason Adam
Web site & newsletter: functionalbits.io

Have a topic to discuss on the show? Let me know!
Want a private consultation? Borrow my brain.

Jac Hughes — All about Scrum, when you should (and shouldn't) use it, and how to get started

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 03 May 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Since leaving the Royal Navy about 7 years ago, Jac Hughes has found himself drawn to the world of Scrum and agile software development. He now runs Everyday Agile, an agile coaching and training business based in the UK.

In this episode

How Jac got into Agile and Scrum
Learning from a wide variety of organizations, from simple to complex
What does "Agile" mean to you, and how is it different from "agility"?
What is the relationship between Scrum and agility?
Picking and choosing the elements of Scrum, SAFe, LeSS, and other approaches, that work best for the context.
When is Scrum the right or wrong fit?
Top-down vs bottom-up agile adoption
How agility permeates the business, not just development, from client contracts to recruiting and onboarding, and everything else
How to decide on an agile approach, whether Scrum or something else
Does Scrum work when cross-functional teams aren't possible?
Biggest misconceptions about Scrum
How to start adopting Scrum
Does Scrum make sense for a platform, operations, or DevOps team?
Thoughts on story points, estimates, and #NoEstimates
How important is official Scrum training or certifications?
When and how should a team find external help when implementing Scrum?

Resources
Book: When Will It Be Done? by Daniel S. Vacanti
Blog series: Story Pointless (Part 1 of 3) by Nick Brown
Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox

Guest
Jac Hughes
LinkedIn: jac-hughes
Everyday Agile
YouTube channel: Everyday Agile

Morgan Craft — Is a fractional CTO right for your company?

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0200

Morgan Craft is a New York-based former software engineer and CTO, and currently a founder and Fractional CTO. He joins me to discuss the concept of a fractional CTO, why they're growing in popularity, and how to decide whether one is right for you.

In this episode

Why would a company hire a fractional CTO instead of a full-time CTO?
Why it's so hard for early-stage startups to hire a full-time CTO
How soon should a new company hire a fractional CTO?
What are the risks of continuing without a CTO?
How "hands-on" is a typical fractional CTO?
The relationship between the CTO and the product in small companies
How to choose a fractional CTO
How do you coach and mentor developers you work with?
Thoughts on working with off-shore developers?
Is a fractional CTO as committed as a full-time CTO?
What does it look like to graduate from a fractional CTO to a full-time CTO?
What does a fractional CTO cost?
Do fractional CTOs typically earn equity?
Using a fractional CTO to hire your first developer
How to connect with a fractional CTO

Resources

Morgan Craft on Managers Club podcast: What is a Fractional CTO?
Rand's List Leadership Slack

Guest
Morgan Craft
Web site: MorganCraft.com
LinkedIn: mgan59
gitBabel

Stacy Cashmore — The painful crawl through the morass of past shortcuts

Jonathan Hall — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0200

Stacy Cashmore has the interesting title of Tech Explorer DevOps at Omniplan, which means she has free reign to do what she thinks she needs to do! In this episode, we talk about a big rewrite decision she made, and the results of this decision, good and bad.

In this episode

Why "DevOps" does not belong in a job title, and why Stacy put it in her job title anyway.
What is DevOps, if not a job title?
How to respond to mistakes we've made
Why a rewrite is always the wrong decision
Why a rewrite was the right decision in this case
The pressure of proving yourself once you convince management to do a rewrite
DevOps and CI/CD goals for the new system
Where the problem started to go wrong: Awkward tests, shortcuts and technical debt
Working against deadline pressure
Taking the pragmatic approach to CD
The drawbacks to not doing "full CD"
Plans for ongoing improvement
Things to do differently next time, and lessons learned

Resources
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
The DevOps Handbook by Gene Kim, Patrick Debois, John Willis, Jez Humble
The Unicorn Project by Gene Kim
The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim

Guest
Stacy Cashmore
Twitter: @Stacy_Cash
Web site: stacy-clouds.net

Bryan Finster — The One Agile Scaling Framework to Rule Them All

Jonathan Hall — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0200

Bryan Finster returns to Tiny DevOps, this time to explain the amazing benefits of his new Scaled Agile DevOps Maturity Framework (SAD MF), the silver bullet that you, and literally everyone else, should be using.

In this episode

What motivated the invention of the Scaled Agile DevOps Maturity Framework (SAD MF)?
How Convoys are superior to Trains for agility
An overview of some of the new Agile Ceremonies introduced by this innovative framework
The benefits of Scrum of Scrum of Scrum of Scrums
How SAD ensures that we build quality in, via the ceremony of the Tribunal
How to guard psychological safety of leadership
How a SAD MF certification badge exemplifies the value of certification badges
Why you should absolutely be SAD MF certified, even if you already have other certifications
Why executives love SAD MF: No risk of culture change!
Why the titles provided by SAD MF instill confidence in the heirarchy
Why nobody dislikes SAD MF
The amazing metrics mandated by SAD MF which make manager's lives seem easier immediately
How the SAD MF QA Team frees coders from worrying about user requirements, and whether their code works
What changes are coming up in SAD MF 3.0?

Resources
Scaled Agile DevOps
Minimum Viable CD and (Tiny DevOps Episode #21)

Guest
Bryan Finster
LinkedIn: bryan-finster
Medium: https://bdfinst.medium.com/

Matt K Parker — Radical Collaboration, how Radical Enterprises do it, and how you can, too

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0200

More and more organizations are adopting a "Radically Collaborative" approach to business. Matt K. Parker, author of the new book A Radical Enterprise joins me to discuss what this means, why it's desirable, and how to begin adopting these practices in our own organizations.

In this episode

What is "Radical Collaboration"?
What does radical collaboration mean for the business bottom line?
The four imperatives of radical collaboration: Team Autonomy, Managerial Devolution, Deficiency Gratification, Candid Vulnerability
How do Agile Software Development and the DevOps movement relate to the idea of radical collaboration?
How are OKRs similar to or different from the radical collaboration model?
The "Advice Process", and how decisions are made without designated managers.
What recourse do these organizations have against potential "bad actors"?
How do self-selected salaries work?
How does this book fit into the landscape of recent books such as Reinventing Organizations and Team of Teams on new ways of management?
Do companies ever fail in their attempts to become radically collaborative, and why?
What can a lone individual do to begin a transformation toward radical collaboration?
When is the best time in a company's life cycle to begin a radical collaboration transformation?
What can a solo founder or entrepreneur do to begin laying the foundation for radical collaboration when they make their first hire?
How long does it take to transform to a radically collaborative organization?

Resources

Book: A Radical Enterprise by Matt K. Parker
HOW report
Book: High Output Management by Andrew Grove
Book: Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux
Book: Team of Teams by Gen. Stanley McChrystal
Book: Corporate Rebels by Joost Minnaar
Blog post: How to Run A Radically Collaborative Meeting In 3 Easy Steps by Matt K. Parker
Book: Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet
Book: Humanocracy by Gary Hamel & Michele Zanini
Book: The No-Limits Enterprise by Doug Kirkpatrick
Book: Holacracy by Brian J. Robertson
Corporate Rebels web site
MattKParker.com to join the Slack community

Guest
Matt K. Parker
Web site: MattKParker.com
Email: matt@mattkparker.com

How can I best prepare for a job interview? And other DevOps career Q&A

Jonathan Hall — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 03:37:46 +0100

In this episode, I tackle some questions from listeners, and provide my own answers to your DevOps Careers questions:

What are red flags in job ads about DevOps?
How can I best prepare for an interview?
What can I do to prepare for a DevOps Director Role?
How do we cope with the expectation that we need to be learning new technologies all the time?

Resources
The Daily Commit: Knowledge Options

Send your questions for an upcoming Q&A episode to jonathan@jhall.io.

Joy Ebertz — All About Feature Flags

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 05:29:03 +0100

Joy Ebertz is a Principal Software Engineer at Split. She focuses on the technical vision for the backend team, and she joins me today to talk about some of the obvious, as well as not so obvoius ways in which feature flags can be used on projects of any size.

In this episode

When does it make sense to start using a Feature Flagging library or service?
Should you build your own Feature Flagging service?
Using Feature Flags to test in production
Using Feature Flags for large features to allow Continuous Integratoin
Enabling feature packs or service tiers with Feature Flags
Feature Flags for circuit-breaking
How to use Feature Flags for infrastructure migrations
What is feature parity checking, and how to do it with Feature Flags
Some common gotchas with Feature Flags
How do A/B tests relate to Feature Flags?
Differences on mobile apps when using Feature Flags

Resources
Split.io
Blog: 7 Ways We Use Feature Flags Every Day at Split

Guest
Joy Ebertz
Blog: https://jkebertz.medium.com/
Twitter: @jkebertz
LinkedIn: joyebertz

Jonathan Hall — The Butterfly Effect: How a Single Bit Changed My Career

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0100

This week I share the story of a single bit gone wrong back in 2006, which launched my career on a new trajectory of root-cause analysis, continuous improvement, and DevOps.

Resources
Blog: Joel on Software
Book: Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers
Book: Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck
Book: Clean Code by Robert Martin
The Joel Test
Talk: 10+ Deploys Per Day (12:45)
The Jonathan Test
Lean CD Bootcamp
Presentation Slides and notes

Lynn Thames — What do software development and manufacturing have in common? Agility.

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0100

Lynn Thames' business Excel Software Services, helps manufacturing and distribution companies with software automation. She joins me to help answer the question: What does software development have in common with manufacturing? Her answer: Agility.

In this episode

Who is Excel Software Services, and what they do
How Excel was founded by Lynn's father in 1978
What kinds of companies Excel work with, and what problems they need help solving
How Excel solves these problems, with SaaS and custom software solutions
The challenge and dangers of vendor lock-in when building on a third-party platform like Magento
Parallels between manufacturing and software development
The challenges and benefits of doing agile software development for clients
The importance of trust and buy-in for agile software development
Value-pricing software development
Excel's switch from waterfall to agile and Scrum
Estimating development tasks for clients

Resources
Book: The Phoenix Project
Book: The Goal
Value Pricing

Guest
Lynn Thames
Excel Software Services

Emily Omier — How to "sell" open-source

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 01:09:07 +0100

Does your company produce open-source software? Are you considering doing so? Emily Omier helps open-source startups with product positioning, and today she joins me to discuss how you can position your open-source project, if you have one, and help you decide if you should have one.

In this episode:

What are the reasons to contribute open-source, as a company?
What are the differences and siilarities between open-source and non-open-source software products.
How to market your product to both technical and non-technical people.
Why to focus on outcomes before features
Who are the buyers/stakeholders for your product?
Use language that resonates with your target audience
Should you seek contributors for an open-source project? And if so, how?
Tips for accepting financial sponsorships

Guest
Emily Omier
emilyomier.com
Cloud Native Startup podcast
Positioning Open Source blog
Twitter: @EmilyOmier

Adrian Stanek — Think In Baby Steps

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0100

Adrian Stanek, of Bits in Motion, joins me to relate his success story of transforming his organization's software development process via baby steps. We discuss his old architecture, why it was problematic, and the strategy he employed to gradually replace it with a new, more modern micro-frontend-based architecture. Adrian also shares where improvements are still needed, and his planned next steps to get there.

Resources
Daily Email: Why most Agile Transformations fail
Strangler Fig Application by Martin Fowler
Lean CD

Guest
Adrian Stanek
LinkedIn: adrianstanek
https://adrianstanek.dev/
bitsinmotion

Charles Max Wood — Level Up Your Career

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0100

Charles Max Wood is the founder of Top End Devs, a platform focused on teaching developers how to achive top 5% status in their chosen field, and in this episode we talk about what that means, and how six simple practices can help you achieve that goal.

We discuss whether everyone ought to aim for the top 5%, and why most people don't make it. We talk about the daily, weekly, monthly, and other habits that can help anyone climb the ranks quickly.

Resources
Adventures in DevOps Podcast
Top End Devs
Book: The MaxCoders Guide To Finding Your Dream Developer Job

Guest
Charles Max Wood
Top End Devs half off!
Twitter: @cmaxw

Will Button — The Inside Scoop on Teaching DevOps

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0100

Will Button, co-host of the Adventures in DevOps podcast and DevOps "YouTuber" joins me to discuss his nascent DevOps media empire.

Will talks about his motivation to start doing online training and his YouTube channel, his core audience, and walks us through some of the behind-the-scenes aspects of his content creation, along with a healthy dose of encouragement for anyone else interested in dipping their toe into the YouTube water.

Resources
Adventures in DevOps podcast
Egghead.io
Pluralsight
Packt Publishing
DevOps for Developers on YouTube
Video: DevOps Future
Video: DIY DevOps Projects
My daily list: The Daily Commit
The Million Dollar Homepage

Guest
Will Button
YouTube channel: DevOps for Developers
Twitter: @wfbutton

Rob Walling — Does "DevOps" Matter to Investors?

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 09:00:00 +0100

Rob Walling, co-founder of the TinySeed accelerator for bootstrapped SaaS founders, joins me to discuss what investors and potential acquirers look for in the technology they're investing in. What technology choices matter to potential investors or acquirers of your company? Can tech debt sink a deal? Does it matter at this level if you use Kubernetes?

Resources
Podcast: Startups For the Rest Of Us
TinySeed
MicroConf Connect
MicroConf YouTube Channel

Guest
Rob Walling
Twitter: @robwalling

Amando Abreu — Defining Confusing Terms

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 09:00:00 +0100

In this week's episode we strive to define some confusing and controversial terms:

DevOps
Agile
MVP
API
Done
Hacker/Hacking
Engineer vs Developer
Tiny

Resources
Video: 10+ Deploys Per Day 2:08
The Manifesto for Agile Software Development
Book: The Lean Startup by Eric Reis
Humans are Turing Complete
Tiny DevOps Episode 19: Mastering Evolutionary Design with J.B. Rainsberger 44:15

Co-host
Amando Abreu
LinkedIn

Steve Wells — Using Games and Simulations for Agile Education

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 09:00:00 +0100

Steve Wells is a former developer, Scrum master, and agile coach who now builds online games and simulations related to Agile software development practices.

Resources
Agile Cambridge 2018 talk: Efficiencies in interdependent agile teams
No Estimates Board Game by Matt Philip
Book: The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Book: The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim
The Pareto Principle
The Phoenix Project DevOps Simulation

Guest
Steve Wells
Contact via web site: https://agilesimulations.co.uk/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hogsmill/

Parham Doustdar — The Blind Leading the Sighted: What We Can Learn From an Ex-Software Engineer Without Sight

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 09:00:00 +0100

Parham Doustdar, Engineering Manager of Accessibility at Booking.com, joins me to discuss life as a fully blind sofware engineer, and how we can make engineering tools more accessible for everyone, not just those with disabilities.

Whether you have a disability or not, whether it's visible or invisible, accessibility affects you. Parham talks about the benefits to everyone of clean code, explict error messages, and using multiple modes of communication. He talks about his experience getting into tech, the unique challenges, and joys, of doing so without the benefit of physical sight, and gives some tips for how every one of us can improve the quality of life of everyone else who uses the systems we build.

Resources
Microsoft Accessibility resources
Apple's developer resources
Book: Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin

Guest
Parham Doustdar
Twitter: @PD90
Web site: https://parhamdoustdar.com/

Jillian Rowe — Where DevOps Meets Data Science

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 09:00:00 +0100

Jillian Rowe, who you may know as a regular co-panelist on the Adventures in DevOps podcast, joins me to talk about her work at the crossroads of bioinformatics, Data Science and DevOps. We have a casual conversation about her business as a freelancer and early-stage startup founder, and some of the unique challenges that come when working with Big Data and bioinformatics, and how she is addressing scaling challenges as a solo operator.

Resources
Science Daily
Strapi headless CMS
Hugo static site generator
Discourse
BioAnalyze on GitHub
BioAnalyze newsletter
Bioinformatics on AWS YouTube Channel

Guest
Jillian Rowe
Twitter: @jillianerowe
LinkedIn: Jillian Rowe

Ola Ellnestam — Disecting Complexity With the Mikado Method

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 09:00:00 +0100

Ola Ellnestam, along with co-author Daniel Brolund, wrote the book The Mikado Method, which describes an incremental approach to code refactoring, as well as project management. In this interview Ola discusses the application of the technique, common pitfalls and objections to it, and provides insight into how the technique can be used to help communicate technical debt and dependencies with non-technical stakeholders.

Resources
Book: The Mikado Method by Ola ellnestam and Daniel Brolund
Blog post: test && commit || revert by Kent Beck
Video: The Mikado Method: Increase Productivity, Workflow Management, and Sex Appeal! by Jonathan Hall
The Mikado Tool

Guest
Ola Ellnestam
Twitter: @ellnestam
LinkedIn: ellnestam
Email: ola@agical.se

Ashleigh Cornelius — On a Mission To Connect With Local Businesses

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 09:00:00 +0100

Ashleigh Cornelius is the founder of Localise, a UK-based startup on a mission to bring consumers together with local, independent businesses. We talk about the vision and story of Localise, and some of the challenges he's faced as a (mostly) non-technical founder building a technology startup.

Resources
Localise web site
Instagram
Facebook
LinkedIn

Guest
Ashleigh Cornelius on Instagram

Andy Suderman — Where To Host Your Kubernetes

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 09:00:00 +0100

Andy Suderman of Fairwinds joins me to talk about the pros and cons of each of the big three cloud providers, Amazon EKS, Google GKE, and Azure AKS, and helps point new Kubernetes adoptors to the optimal provider for their needs.

Guest
Andy Suderman
Find him on the Kubernetes slack or CNCF slack

Resources
Amazon EKS
Google GKE
Azure AKS
Fairwinds Insights to simplify Kubernetes

Bryan Finster — Minimum Viable Continuous Delivery

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 05:00:00 +0100

Bryan Finster is a co-creator of Minimum Viable Continuous Delivery, and in this episode we talk about how this concept was born, what problems it aims to address, and how you can use it on your team to improve your continuous delivery.

Resources
minimumcd.org
eBook: Trunk-Based Development by Paul Hammant

Guest
Bryan Finster
LinkedIn
5 Minute DevOps blog

J. B. Rainsberger — Mastering Evolutionary Design, Part 2

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 05:00:00 +0100

J.B. Rainsberger is a long-time XP practitioner, who believes in helping developers simplify their work lives.

In this second of a two-part interview, J. B. offers practical advice on how to "get over the hump" of evolutionary design, and really, how to learn any new skill.

Resources
Geoffrey Moore's chasm theory
Chunking article from Wikipedia
Book: Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Book: The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt
7 minutes, 26 seconds talk by J. B. Rainsberger (34:37)
The World's Best Intro to TDD

Guest
J.B. Rainsberger
Personal Site
Blog

Listen to part 1

J. B. Rainsberger — Mastering Evolutionary Design, Part 1

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 05:00:00 +0100

J.B. Rainsberger is a long-time XP practitioner, who believes in helping developers simplify their work lives.

In this first part of a two-part interview, J. B. joins me to talk about evolutionary design, what it is, why it's useful, and the barriers that keep many people from experiencing its benefits.

Resources
Test-Driven Development by Example by Kent Beck
Programmer Anarchy talk by Fred George
Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers

Guest
J.B. Rainsberger
Personal Site
The World's Best Intro to TDD
Blog

Steve Pereira — The value of value flow mapping

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 05:00:00 +0100

Steve Pereira describes the concept of value stream mapping, and how it, and related techniques, can be used to improve the flow of practically any process from product ideation to delivery and customer experience. Steve is the founder of Visible, and is obsessed with making tech human, and leveraging it to deliver continuous value.

Resources
Book: Project to Product by Dr. Mik Kersten
Free eBook: Flow Engineering by Steve Pereira

Value Stream Management Course
Newsletter for upcoming book: Inside Out

Guest: Steve Pereira
LinkedIn
Email: steve@visible.is
Ultimate link

Daniel Bartholomae — Borrow My Brain: Integrating Dev and QA

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 04:00:00 +0100

In this episode, Daniel Bartholomae, CTO of Optilyz, "borrows my brain" for a consultatative discussion about how to improve the integration of QA in a growing startup with just two dev teams.

We discuss the theory of setting up QA to support developers, rather than to act as gatekeepers, and many of the practical implications.

Resources
Borrow my brain
Tiny DevOps Episode #5: George Stocker — A Dogma-Free Approach to TDD
Book: Accelerate by Nicole Forsgren PhD, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim

Guest
Daniel Bartholomae, CTO of Optilyz
Optilyz job openings

The scariest technical screening you've ever seen!

Jonathan Hall — Sun, 31 Oct 2021 04:00:00 +0100

In this short, Halloween bonus episode, I talk about a very scary technical screening process I learned about just a couple of days ago. I explain why the screening process is scary from the perspective of both the candidate, and the hiring manager.

Looking to hire a DevOps engineer soon? You may be interested in my upcoming book How To Hire Your First DevOps Engineer. Sign up to receive updates as more information becomes available.

Lukas Vermeer — Can small companies do effective A/B testing?

Jonathan Hall — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 11:50:54 +0200

In this episode I speak with Lukas Vermeer, former head of experimentation at Booking.com, and currently working with Vista. He answers the question of whether A/B testing makes sense in small companies and startups, and with small numbers of customers. We also discuss the broader topic of experimentation in general, and applying the scientific method to business development.

Resources
Dutch TV interview with Edsger Dijkstra in which he expounds his theory on software versions
Edmond Halley on Wikipedia
Book: Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments by Stefan H. Thomke
Book: Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments: A Practical Guide to A/B Testing by Ron Kohavi, Diane Tang & Ya Xu
Book: Field Experiments: Design, Analysis, and Interpretation by Alan S. Gerber & Donald P. Green
Book: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn

Guest
Lukas Vermeer
https://lukasvermeer.nl/
lukas@lukasvermeer.nl

Watch the video of this episode.

Jonathan Hall — Scrum Isn't Enough

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 05:00:00 +0200

This episode is a replay of my Scrum Day Europe 2021 presentation, Scrum Isn't Enough: Why DevOps is essential for Agile success.

When Scrum was formulated, it was seen as a “wrapper” for more technical agile practices, such as Extreme Programming. A conscious choice was made to focus on the relationship between software developers and management. It was assumed that Scrum would be used to promote more technical developer practices, which Scrum leaves unaddressed. DevOps not only works hand-in-glove with Scrum to fill in these missing gaps, it is more and more seen as an essential tool for Agile success.

Resources:
Scrum Day Europe 2021
Presentation slides
Book: Agile Software Development with Scrum
The 2021 Scrum Guide
Book: The Phoenix Project
Book: The Unicorn Project
Free email Lean CD Bootcamp

Ben Curtis — Incident response on a bootstrapped budget

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 05:00:00 +0200

Ben Curtis is one of the cofounders of Honeybadger.io, and in this episode we talk about the joys, and challenges, of managing infrastructure on a bootstrapped budget. Ben walks us through 9 years of history since Honeybadger.io's inception, to today, and offers concrete tips you can employ so you can take a holiday again!

Resources
Ship it! A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects
Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems or read free online
The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data
Honeybadger exception monitoring

Today's Guest
Ben Curtis
Twitter: @stympy
Email: ben@honeybadger.io

Watch episode on YouTube

Molood Ceccarelli — The freedom of remote working

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 05:00:00 +0200

Molood Ceccarelli is the founder of Remote Forever. She is a remote work strategist and agile coach often referred to as the queen of remote work in agile. Her work has been published in places such as Forbes, Huffington Post and Inc.com as well as Scrum Alliance and Shiftup.

In this episode, we discuss the differences between remote work during the pandemic, and "normal" remote work. Molood gives tips on how to make your company, team, or individual work more effecitve, productive, and free using remote-first techniques and principles.

Today's Guest
Molood Ceccarelli
Remote Forever
Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter

Luca Ingianni — Does DevOps make sense for embedded systems?

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 05:00:00 +0200

Luca Ingianni is a former aeronautical engineer turned IT and DevOps practicioner. He is a teacher and advisor on a mission to teach and advise engineers to apply DevOps ways that works best for them and their customers. He is also the co-host of The Agile Embedded podcast.

In this episode, we talk about applying DevOps principles to "non-standard" technical stacks, particularly to answer the question: Does DevOps make sense for embedded systems software?

Today's Guest
Luca Ingianni
Co-host of The Agile Embedded Podcast
Personal web site

Resources
Book: Test-Driven Development for Embedded C by James Grenning

Mike Taber — Doing DevOps as a Single Founder

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 05:00:00 +0200

Mike Taber is the single founder of Bluetick.io, the SaaS which automates email follow-ups. In this episode, we talk about his life as the single Dev, single Ops, single Marketing, and single everything else in his company.

Today's Guest
Mike Taber
Twitter: @SingleFounder
Bluetick: https://bluetick.io/
Founder Cafe: https://www.foundercafe.com/

Resources:
Startups for the Rest of Us Podcast
MicroConf

Erik Dietrich — Avoiding the Trap of Expert Beginnerism

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 13 Jul 2021 05:00:00 +0200

Erik Dietrich is the author of "The Expert Beginner", which expands on the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition with the addition of the "Expert Beginner", one who stops learning, incorrectly believing they have achieved expert level.

We discuss factors that lead to this phenomenon and how to detect it in yourself and overcome the trap if you've fallen victim. Erik also discusses the types of organizations and management practices that promote this toxic persona.

Resources:
Book: The Expert Beginner
Blog post: How Developers Stop Learning: Rise of the Expert Beginner
Wikipedia: Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition

Today's Guest
Erik Dietrich
https://daedtech.com/
https://www.hitsubscribe.com/

Miriam Tocino — Using stories for technical communication

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 05:00:00 +0200

Miriam Tocino is a children's book author and illustrator who focuses on teaching children a passion for technology. In this episode, we create a story together of the characters Zerus and Ona, as they explore how a voice message is sent through the cloud, to a friend.

We use this this to demonstrate the process of using illustrations and creative imagery to explain complex topics to children and other non-technical people.

Watch the recording of the full, unedited workshop here.

Today's Guest
Miriam Tocino
Twitter: @miriamtocino or @zerusandona
Email: miriam@zerusandona.com

Resources

Free Zerus & Ona Binary Carnival Card Game
16% discount code on book purchases from zerusandona.com: TINYDEVOPS
Avital Tzubeli
LinkedIn: tzubeli
Katie Cunningham
Research article: Avoiding the Turing Tarpit: Learning Conversational Programming by Starting from Code's Purpose
Video: Avoiding the Turing Tarpit: Learning Conversational Programming by Starting from Code's Purpose
Twitter: @katieirenec

Amando Abreu — Automatic rollback & other listener questions

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 05:00:00 +0200

In this Q&A episode, guest co-host Amando Abreu and I answer the following listener questions:

- Why is it so hard to persuade people not to put passwords/tokens/api-keys/ssh-keys in git repos?
- Do Developers become better DevOps Engineers than those from an Infrastructure background?
- Do you have an automatic process for rolling back failed deploys?
- How do you find meaning and satisfaction in the indifferent existential vacuum of modern life?
- How do you prepare for a job interview?
- What is the best type of company to work for as a beginner?

Resources
Story of secrets accidentally stored in git, Episode 2 of Tiny DevOps
Discussion of Dev vs Infra background for DevOps, Episode 1 of Tiny DevOps
Daily email archive: Skip the take-home assignment

Co-host
Amando Abreu
LinkedIn

Joel Clermont — Digital Hygiene

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 05:00:00 +0200

Joel Clermont, host of the No Compromises podcast, shares his wisdom on the topic of good digital hygiene, as it relates to development projects, particularly the bits that aren't software. Have you ever joined a team with poor documentation? With third-party credentials scattered all over the place?

Listen to us discuss some simple approaches to solving these problems for the people who will be inheriting a project after you.

Joel Clermont
Podcast: No Compromises
Products: https://nocompromises.io/products
Blog: https://joelclermont.com/
Twitter: @jclermont

Olaf Molenveld — Getting started with Progressive Delivery

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 08:53:41 +0200

Olaf Molenveld, former CTO of Vamp (now part of CirlceCI), joins me to explain the concept of Progressive Delivery, when it makes sense, and what homework every team should do before getting started with canary deployments, red/green deployments, and other progressive strategies.

Resources:
Article Towards Progressive Delivery by James Governor RedMonk
Application deployment and testing strategies from Google:

Guest:
Olaf Molenveld, former CTO of Vamp, now part of CircleCI
LinkedIn
Email: olaf@circleci.com

George Stocker — A Dogma-Free Approach to TDD

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 05:00:00 +0200

Guest Goerge Stocker cuts through the often polarizing debate about Test-Driven Development (TDD) and offers his view on when the practice does and DOES NOT make sense, based on technology as well as human factors which are often overlooked. We discuss the concept that TDD is one of a vast array of techniques to choose from, and some of what goes into selecting the right tool for the job.

Resources
Boundaries talk by Gary Bernhardt of Destroy All Software
Is TDD Right for Your Team? by George Stocker

Today's Guest
George Stocker
https://georgestocker.com
Twitter: @gortok

Peter Morlion — Working with technical debt

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 01 Jun 2021 05:00:00 +0200

In this episode, I talk with Peter Morlion about his love for fixing and improving legacy code, what legacy code is, how we can detect it, and what to do about it when we're faced with it.

Resources:
Book: Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers:
Martin Fowler's blog
Legacy Code Rocks
MenderCon

Today's Guest:
Peter Morlion
Personal tech blog
Technical debt blog
Twitter: @petermorlion
LinkedIn: petermorlion

Zachary Randall — The benefits of serverless for staff-strapped teams

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 25 May 2021 05:02:00 +0200

Zachary Randall talks about the benefits of serverless technology, especially for small and understaffed teams. Aside from saving money on the hosting bill, serverless can simplify maintenence. We also discuss what it takes to get started with serverless, and what changes are necessary from a tooling or workflow standpoint.

Today's Guest:
Zachary Randall
Twitter: @thez0rk
Chameleon Collective
Music: Northern Crown, Miasma Theory

John Goerzen — IT lessons from the aviation industry

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 25 May 2021 05:01:00 +0200

John Goerzen is a staff engineer at Fastly, and an amateur pilot. In this episode, we talk about some of the parallels between aviation and IT, as it relates to risk management, incident response, and the mentalities that can lead to problems. We discuss the concept of an accident chain; the idea that most incidents don't have a single cause, but a long list of contributing causes. We discuss the importance of blameless postmortems for improving how we respond to failures, and the human aspect of incident prevention.

Resources:
Video: Faulty Assumptions
NASA ASRS reports: Callback
Video series: AOPA Accident Case Studies
PDF: FAA Aeronautical Decision Making

Today's Guest:
John Goerzen
Blog: The Changelog
Mastadon: @jgoerzen@floss.social
Twitter: @jgoerzen

Patric Conant — Don't throw the infra baby out with the bathwater

Jonathan Hall — Tue, 25 May 2021 05:00:00 +0200

In this episode of The Tiny DevOps Podcast, Jonathan talks with guest Patric Conant about an often-overlooked aspect of our technology stack: the physical infrastructure. Patric talks about some common problems he sees, and some simple tips to make sure your team doesn't fall into the common trap of throwing the "infrastructure baby" out with the bathwater.

Resources:
The AWK Programming Language by Alfred V Aho
NMAP Network Scanning by Gordon Fyodor Lyon

Todays guest:
Patric Conant, @MirageComputing

Jonathan Hall — Introducing the Tiny DevOps Guy

Jonathan Hall — Fri, 14 May 2021 15:01:49 +0200

In this miniature episode, I talk with... myself about the reason this podcast exists.

Sign up for my daily email list: https://jhall.io/daily
Follow me on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5UfX0EgUWlcdQ2RDsq_fcA