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 of blaming each other for the mistakes they made, they concentrated on the system of the space craft and how to work with what was left of it. Only that broad, holistic focus on the system let them survive.
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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 the loudest one.
Now imagine the same play performed by the same kid five years later. The notes flow like a river, the emphasis not on individual sounds but on the whole sequence at once. Listening to the piece is pure joy, because every note works together with the others to create a beautiful experience.
Distributing your software development through separate departments is like a seven year old playing the piano. Every department works on its own, rivaling with the others to be the most important. The output is a pain for your customers and the quality is really poor. But how can we create an organization where the individual parts play nicely together? One way of making departments play together are feature teams. Let’s see how this could work out.
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“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 who the hell has time for all that?
Monthly, bite-size updates will have fewer features requiring less support (pro-tip: less code == less bugs). Speeding up your release cycle also allows quicker response to customers’ feedback. You’ll finally feel your company moving in the right direction again.
Of course, it’s easy to say. But how can you actually achieve this positive flow? Follow these key points and you’ll be well on your way.
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Monday morning on the highway. Your speed: 0 mph. You’re stuck in the usual rush hour traffic jam because the capacity of this road is exceeded. And it’s now obvious you’ll reach your destination much later than if the road were empty.
But what happens if you exceed the capacity of your development team? What happens when you cram in more features than the team can develop? Your features will get stuck in development. Let’s see how this can happen.
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A rope. Eight people on either side. “Pull!” And then it begins: both parties are pulling in their own direction. A tug-of-war has started.
Imagine your developers and sysadmins as those two parties starting that tug-of-war
Each group has different goals. And having different goals leads to each party pulling in another direction. How can this happen and what to do about it?
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There are DevOps tools and DevOps job ads. People talk about culture and sharing and being nice to each other. Sounds pretty fishy, right? The only thing missing is a DevOps certification and we’re done with the DevOps hype. Is DevOps really just a fad? Let’s take a closer look…
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Investing into code improvement is a dual edged sword: on the one hand you know that if you don’t improve your code you’ll get slower over time. On the other hand improving your code does not deliver tangible value to your users. So how do you know whether you’re on track?
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London Stansted Airport, early afternoon – a huge crowd at the railway station. No trains – only people, and a lot of confusion and anger. Having just flown an hour from Munich, Germany, I was supposed to meet a client two hours after touch down. But here I stood, waiting with the crowds: the railway just broke down. After several hours of waiting, I was able to catch a bus and reached London city late in the evening – but the client meeting was long over. The whole trip (not to mention an entire day of my life) was wasted just because one leg in my journey failed. Do your users waste their time because you have failing legs in your product development journey?
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We’ve teamed up with Packt Publishing to organize a giveaway of their new book “Continuous Delivery and DevOps: A Quickstart Guide” as a holiday gift to you our readers!
Four lucky winners stand a chance to win copies of this new book. Keep reading to find out how you can be one of them.
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