Agile Web Operations

Photo by woodleywonderworks

Let's face it, compared to other engineering disciplines software development is just coming out of the stone age. Heck, I'm sure I'll get a lot of flak for even suggesting that software development is an engineering discipline (though I have to admit the way a lot of developers go about their work, calling it engineering does seem a bit of a stretch). Real life is seldom black and white, but I'd like to describe the two basic camps below.

Serial processing through departments for Release X.Y.Z

Most of us have worked at a place like this and, unfortunately, most of us still do. You know what I'm talking about - a traditional shop running with the waterfall process. Each department spends months working on a feature that ultimately, not many people are thrilled about releasing.

 development is finished when the calendar has advanced to a mystical date picked out of thin air months before

 after "finishing", the QA department can begin testing and will find the bugs (after all, this is their job, right?)

 operations is generally the last to know about the new feature resulting in emergency architecture meetings, more compromises, and even more delays

Most of us have seen, or at least heard of, the Mel Gibson movie "What Women Want". It certainly is a tantalizing idea - being able to read the thoughts of other people. Now being able to read your sysadmin's mind may not be at the top of your wish list, but, I bet there were a few times it sure would have helped fathom the meaning of that chill stare of contempt from across the table.

Or, I could just tell you what they’re thinking. For starters, what will be the production usage of that new feature you’re developing? Now, I know you're not Nostradamus - but, you've thought about this, right? Any idea how many additional web server requests per user or session? What about the performance overhead of those additional database queries — what's the longest running query now? Will you need to run that cronjob every five minutes or is once a week fine? These are just a few of the everyday concerns your sysadmin has while operating your company's website. Have enough respect for his work (and yours) to do a bit of homework and come up with some numbers here.