In this podcast, Marty Abbott and Tanya Cordrey sat down with InfoQ podcast co-host Daniel Bryant. Abbott, CEO and co-founder of AKF Partners, and Cordrey, partner at AKF Partners, discussed topics that included: their learning from working together in the early days of eBay, why and how to avoid creating software systems that are composed of deep call chains of microservices, and how to build effective product teams.

Why listen to this podcast:

- First introduced in the book “The Art of Scalability”, the AKF Scale Cube is a model for segmenting software components, defining microservices, and scaling products. It also creates a common language for teams to discuss scale related options in designing solutions.

- The microservice architectural pattern is best used for implementing the “breadth” of business functionality. Engineers should avoid building deep call chains of services, as this can increase the probability of failure, and can also increase the challenges of locating and diagnosing issues. Code libraries can often be used more effectively to implement “depth” within services.

- The AKF Availability Cube is a new model to guide discussions on how to achieve high availability. This model can also be used as a mathematical tool to evaluate the theoretical “as designed” availability of existing systems.

- Building products using cross-functional teams is an effective approach. However, care should be taken not to accidentally create unnecessarily large teams, as this can add communication and coordination friction to the delivery process.

- Teams should make a conscious choice to adopt new technologies, and understand the benefits and tradeoffs with doing so. Managing risk, and in particular, technology lifespan risk, is an important part of the value engineers provide to the business.

More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2AbpZjT

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