Archive for month: January, 2015

Before it was called “DevOps”, it was just “magic”

26 January, 2015 (06:41) | Uncategorized | By: seth

One thing I had forgotten in my time away from Amazon was that their code management, packaging, and deployment systems are magic. Seriously impressive internally built tools to manage a large, but usually decoupled codebase across thousands of servers in data centers around the world. Magic indeed… sometime black magic, but magic nonetheless. There are […]

How to communicate: Tools of the trade

19 January, 2015 (07:20) | Uncategorized | By: seth

One of the biggest issues I see on struggling software teams (although this is not limited to software) is problems with communication.   Modern software is complex, and therefore our software teams can be complex.   There are many groups within and external to the team that require information for successful delivery Developers Testers Engineering […]

TiP is misunderstood – perhaps DDQ is Better

12 January, 2015 (06:51) | Uncategorized | By: seth

I spent a long time talking to folks about the merits of a conscientious Testing in Production (TiP) strategy.  But I knew TiP had a bad rap.  I even shared the story of how some would mischaracterize it as a common and costly technical malpractice While evangelizing TiP, I and my Microsoft colleagues would happily […]

Who is the HiPPO?

8 January, 2015 (19:50) | Uncategorized | By: seth

HiPPO stands for Highest Paid Person’s Opinion HiPPO driven decision making is the opposite of data-driven decision making.  The highest paid” person may be your boss, or the VP with his eye on the project, or even the CEO.  But no matter how many of those big bucks they are pulling down, it turns out […]