The Ship Show

It's time again for all the Chefs to get together in the kitchen in San Francisco and look at all of the developments in the last year, plus look forward to the next year in the configuration management space, industry trends in DevOps and, of course, Chef! We grab a bottle of bourbon, some bacon, and sit down to discuss all of the "shenanigans" at ChefConf 2014, as well as look back at the keynotes, our favorite talks, hallway track conversations with old friends and new, plus reveal this year's Awesome Community Chefs. Join the panel, plus a couple of very special surprise guests, as we go: Delving Into the Delight of ChefConf 2014

Creating that initial environment for your application to run in is a solved problem. Or is it? On the market today, there are a seemingly ever-increasing number of tools to facilitate that process: CFEngine, Puppet, Chef, Vagrant, Packer, Ansible, Salt Stack, Rundeck... the list goes on. In episode 39, the panel takes a closer look at one of these new tools: Docker. The panel is joined once again by Atlassian's James Dumay, since the discussion was prompted by a question he tweeted: "[S]omeone thinks Docker can replace Chef/Puppet. I believe they are at least complementary." Are they? And what workflows make sense for Docker? Join the panel as we try: Deciphering the "Docker Lifestyle"

At some point in every discussion of DevOps or organizational transformations, The Phoenix Project, the seminal book by Kevin Behr, Gene Kim, and George Spafford comes up. More than just "A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win," it's become a "water cooler" book for everyone from sysadmins in the basement to CxOs in the boardroom. Released in January 2013, we sit down with Gene Kim to look at how The Phoenix Project has influenced our industry over the past year, plus ask Gene questions we've always had about the characters and the story. Plus, we find out what Gene's been working on since Phoenix shipped. Join us for: A Year of The Phoenix Project with Gene Kim.

Our topic for Episode 37 was originally on scaling self-service of configuration management (the source code kind, not the infrastructure kind!) good practices, but quickly morphed into a discussion of what organizations need to pay attention and foster to support their tools teams in their often-cited mission of creating a self-service culture and self-service infrastructure. Paul and Sascha square off over the notions of traditional "service" teams and the newer notion of integrated "tools" ("DevOps?") teams. We also touch on warning signs for automating self-service processes, including in the CM space, really examining how and why you convert which processes into self-service, ways to get teams to buy into your self-service initiatives, and what's in the best interests of the entire system that is your software development organization. Join us as we discuss the finer points of: Scaling Your Self-Service as a Service.

In episode 36, we sit down with Shanley Kane and Amelia Greenhall to talk about people and communities within the technology industry and startup/VC culture. We were first introduced to Shanley in episode 24, where the crew discussed her post on microaggression in management. We touch again on that topic today, but also look at the power structures that are often obscured or deemphasized. We also look at what conferences and meetups are (or aren't) doing to help keep all attendees safe, and what we can all do to improve our workplaces and the technology industry as a whole. Plus, we discuss Shanley and Amelia's new venture: Model View Culture, a media company dedicated to helping us all examine and deconstruct the technology industry's: Myths, Archetypes, Heroes, and Imposters

For episode 35, the crew takes a look at a core component of continuous delivery: the application update mechanism. We talk a bit about our collective experiences supporting update paths, how some of the players in our industry conduct their updates, and whether or not that's actually good for customers, or it's just a myth we hear parroted constantly. We also take a look at a couple of case studies related to continuous delivery transformations, and some myths around the implementation details of continuous delivery, ultimately trying to figure out, whether it's customers, engineering teams, release teams, or ops teams, are the way we do updates today is a case of: Continuous Deployment... or Annoy-ment?

To ring in 2014, the panel discusses some of the core elements of release engineering infrastructure for all sorts of applications, from web services to shipped-software. We talk about the challenges of coming into a new environment and having to support an existing infrastructure, a few methods for changing taking the infra over and starting to really own, and the components every build and tool infrastructure needs to address to be considered "operationalized." We revisit some topics we've discussed in previous shows, but it's always a good checklist to run through to see if you've got them covered in: Infrastructure As A Service... You're Responsible For.

For our 2013 finale episode, the crew takes a look back at 2013, discussing the trends we predicted at the beginning of the year, as well as others that crept up on us. We also dust off our collective crystal balls and discuss what we think 2014 will bring for DevOps, cloud, and shipping software. Join us for our holiday of edition of the Ship Show as we: Ringing in 2013++

For episode 0x20, we sit down with Bay Area improvisation trainer Chris Sams. Chris works with all sorts of organizations, including software development companies, teaching their teams in the art of applied improvisation. Most of us probably think of comedy troupes or shows such as Whose Line Is It Anyway when we think of improv, but improv skills can increase team creativity and cohesion, and make it easier for the team to work together and react in real time to unforeseen situations. Chris also discusses how tech companies, specifically, can up their skills by learning improvisation basics, and how this all fits in with companies on their own DevOps transformation journey, plus illuminates some surprising facts about what the basics of improvisation are about! So join us as we sit down, improvise an interview, and try to find out: Whose Function Is It Anyway?

As the holiday season approaches, we take a moment to sit down with Sarah Goff-Dupont and James Dumay from Atlassian's Bamboo team to discuss the full stack of tools used by companies of all sizes, from startups to massive enterprises to NASA to get their software shipped. (Sometimes off of the planet!) Atlassian is known for the bug-tracker Jira, but we discuss the many of the other things they do, the process they use to design the various tools in their stack, how they work to address the special technological and cultural challenges that larger enterprises and governments find themselves facing when working towards scaling a DevOps transformation, and how to get those organizations started. So, grab some turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, and join us for: A Cornucopia of Dev[Ops] Tools: A Chat with Atlassian!