Two pieces of writing advice for when your goal is to communicate, not (just) entertain. Scroll to the bottom for a Yacht Rock playlist. Hold the reader's hand Here’s a piece of writing advice that seems annoying at first, but is especially needed in most non-fiction books: tell people what you’re about to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. I’ll give you an example.

Family pets as OKRs in FY23. Executives to talk about getting better at software. Scroll to the end to see bacon frying. IRL OKRsNew family member.Objective: enhance our comfort, peace of mind, and sense of comradely by owning a dog. Key Result: walk dog three times a day so that it does not pee on the floor. Key Result: feed dog twice a day, check for fresh water once a day, clean food bowls once a week.

You risk being thought a fool if you say "PaaS," so let's get a new phrase, and, please, don't use "portal." Scroll to the end for a steaming hot pancake. Long breakYeah, I don’t know. The stream of content comes and goes. Here’s some since last time. In case you've forgotten, this is my newsletter where I write barely thought-out and edited, uh, opinion pieces and analysis like the below. Also, there are links I've liked, things of mine that I want to shamelessly self-promote, and whatever else.

The Dune books are almost annoyingly self-important; realistic cloud migration strategies; the year in reviews; and links! DuneI’m reading through the Dune books (the core six ones) and I’m struck by how incredibly self-important they are. That’s not the exact phrasing but they’re completely serious and humorless. Almost inhuman!  Still, I’ve finished the first too more quickly than I’ve read any books in the past 12 months. While the pompousness turns me off - and, ironically makes me laugh at how over the top it is - they’re page turners because I want to see what happens next, especially when it comes to world-building.

A little bit on lock-in, some app modernization links, and an online holiday party for you to chill out. The Land of Cockaigne, BruegelLock-inOne of the most frequent objections/benefits/discussion points in software is the idea of "lock-in." This usually means "if I pay someone for something, I'm using something only they have, and I'll be locked into it." With public cloud, it applies to cloud services as well. I'm never really bought into lock-in as a huge deal.

What does "multi-cloud" mean? There are multi-definitions. Har har. Also, securing cloud applications and custom software in state and local governments. Also: kubernetes is not for developers...? Approaching Rain, Southwest Texas, 1922 Julian OnderdonkThe many meanings of "multi-cloud." (Well, two at last.)I really like the recent O'Reilly cloud survey. There's a lot going on in there especially when it comes to seeing how people use cloud, concerns they have, and so forth.

Original contentDevOps Metrics for Technical, Business and Culture TransformationThis is the talk I gave at VMworld this year. It goes over three types of metrics to use in all your digital transformation, get better with software stuff. While I don't list very actionable (yeah! check out that work use!) metrics for culture, I think the novel thing in this talk is the suggestion that you track culture change with metrics. Also, I revisit one of my favorite case studies, the IRS.

Developers don't actually want to change the batteries. BruegelOriginal contentSoftware Defined Talk #328: Your MOM is a SaaS This week we discuss HashiCorp’s S1, AWS Earnings and highlights from Microsoft Ignite. Plus, Coté teaches us a new Dutch phrase. A Shift in Mindset it Critical The missing parts of scaling up DevOps are often involving compliance, security, and most importantly, leadership actually changing and getting more hands on themselves. Check out more in this guest column of mine.

Excuses to keep doing exactly the same thing, if not even less. From The Fight Between Carnival and Lent.Original contentSoftware Defined Talk Episode #326: Just Jump In — www.softwaredefinedtalk.com This week we recap Datadog’s announcements, discuss Sequoia’s investment pivot and hot takes on Facebook’s intent to rebrand. Plus, some thoughts on heated pools… Securing Apps in KubernetesI aspire to talk more about the products we have in Tanzu-land. Here's me talking about the Tanzu Build Service, trying to explain what it does - and why - in less than 2 minutes and 20 seconds:

Another take at writing up why app modernization is important for business, and the usual links to stuff and my recent podcasts, etc. Smuggling in ModernizationI'm working on a project I call the #legacytrap. Trying to explain to executives (CIOs and non-IT executives) how important it is to modernize your old stacks of IT, mostly stuff used to support all that in-house software that runs the business. I have a slide I use that summarizes the problem in surveys: