Tiny DevOps

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

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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

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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/

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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: [email protected]

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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 [email protected].

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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