“you must ask yourself whether your funky way of reconciling payments to the bank or your six-step invoice validation process is really the way to operate in an age where standard processes are well understood & can be automated.” Garbage in, garbage out. Original source: The tech project survival guide

“In an organisation like a local authority this is especially tough as they are such disparate entities. Think about it, in what strange universe does it make sense for a single organisation to collect taxes, deliver social care, pick up bins and operate transport? None of these and many of the other services councils deliver have much to do with each other, apart from the coincidence of local delivery… Coming up with a single vision or operating model for such an organisation is pretty tricky therefore, which makes it less likely that transformation teams are going to get one.

“In an organisation like a local authority this is especially tough as they are such disparate entities. Think about it, in what strange universe does it make sense for a single organisation to collect taxes, deliver social care, pick up bins and operate transport? None of these and many of the other services councils deliver have much to do with each other, apart from the coincidence of local delivery… Coming up with a single vision or operating model for such an organisation is pretty tricky therefore, which makes it less likely that transformation teams are going to get one.

“In almost every case there are stakeholders who are moved by quantitative data (say the percentage of phone calls that could be avoided.) There are also other stakeholders who connect with qualitative human stories. The magic really happens when you offer both types of evidence. Telling the stories, and backing them up with data points for the cost or the impact of what is happening to people, this is evidence with impact.

“In almost every case there are stakeholders who are moved by quantitative data (say the percentage of phone calls that could be avoided.) There are also other stakeholders who connect with qualitative human stories. The magic really happens when you offer both types of evidence. Telling the stories, and backing them up with data points for the cost or the impact of what is happening to people, this is evidence with impact.

How do you implement IT Automation best practices at a large company? What’s the best approach to convince stakeholders that IT Automation is worth the effort? In this interview with Acxiom’s Chris Donaldson we talk all about the good, the bad and ugly of IT Automation. Also see full show notes.

“Also, it is recommended to not deploy to all production environments in one go, exposing all the customers to the changes. A gradual rollout that exposes the changes to customers over a period, thereby implicitly validating the changes in production with a smaller set of customers at a time… As an example, for an application is deployed in 12 regions with US regions (4) having a high load, European regions (4) having a medium load and Asian regions (4) having a relatively lighter load, following would be the order of rollout.

“Also, it is recommended to not deploy to all production environments in one go, exposing all the customers to the changes. A gradual rollout that exposes the changes to customers over a period, thereby implicitly validating the changes in production with a smaller set of customers at a time… As an example, for an application is deployed in 12 regions with US regions (4) having a high load, European regions (4) having a medium load and Asian regions (4) having a relatively lighter load, following would be the order of rollout.

“Kubernetes was created to bring the idea of dynamic, container-centric, managed, scheduled-cluster thinking outside of Google… But what is a container and what does a containerized application mean in this context?” Original source: Kubernetes for the Kubernewbie - The Journey

“Kubernetes was created to bring the idea of dynamic, container-centric, managed, scheduled-cluster thinking outside of Google… But what is a container and what does a containerized application mean in this context?” Original source: Kubernetes for the Kubernewbie - The Journey