LogoffSee y’all next time!

This is the first of a few videos and blog posts I have on our annual Kubernetes survey, which you should check out if you’re into that kind of thing.

The people in my tech community who talk about community find Twitter so vile that there’s little discussion of the good parts. It was a great place for discovering, building, and “doing” community. And it still is, though mixed in with all the other stuff1. This history of DevOps, cloud stuff, and everything that followed - open source, even! - would be different if Twitter weren’t around. We’d be in…listservs? Blogs?

I've proposed an open spaces for DevOpsDays Amsterdam, 2021. The idea is: The DevOps community pushes for people to change how they think and operate. When it comes to working better, we have proven tools, techniques, and even big picture ways of thinking like CALMS. You’re more than likely eager to try these new things, get better, change. However, many more people seem less than eager to change - your co-workers, managers, and the countless “others” in your organization.

I’m working on a new book (check out the work in progress), here’s the premise: After at least five years of struggling to transformation, IT knows how to deliver better software, how to do the process and use the new tools needed for “digital transformation.” They may not actually doall that, but they know what should be done. However, “The Business” is not involved enough nor knows what to do. This prevents achieving the full benefits of digital transformation.

This is a draft excerpt from a book I’m working on, tentatively titled The Business Bottleneck. If you’re interested in the footnotes, leaving a comment, and the further evolution of the book, check out the Google Doc for it. Also, the previous excerpt, “The Finance Bottleneck." Digital transformation is a fancy term for customer innovation and operational excellence that drive financial results. John Rymer & Jeffrey Hammond, Forrester, Feb 2019. The traditional approach to corporate strategy is a poor fit for this new type of digital-driven business and software development.

Here’s a recording of one of my talks. It’s on what the operations team does when running in a platform, DevOps-y, whatever style: Developers don’t need “services” from ops, they need products: continuously innovated platforms that evolve weekly. Once ops toil is removed, ops can focus on their customers’ - development - needs. Using stories & tactics from the real-world, this talk helps launch a platform-as-a-product strategy. And:

I’ve got a newly recorded webinar, covering my Monolithic Transformation book: The cliché we all recite is that technology isn't the problem, culture is. Put another way: if the hardware and software are fine and fresh, it must be the meatware that smells. Come hear several de-funking recipes from the world’s largest companies whose meat now smells proper. I answered a few attendee questions in the webinar, and answered the rest in a Twitter thread afterwards.

Few organizations have or rely on as much software the US Air Force. There’s plenty of it around and, thus, plenty to be improved. In recent years, one of the more spectacular digital transformation stories has come from the USAF’s work modernizing their Air Operations Control software. In this episode, USAF’s Bryon Kroger goes over how they’ve moved multi-year release cycles to just weeks in the Kessel Run projects. Much of the work is in the “fuzzy front” end of planning and procurement, but as Bryon says, an equally, hearty serving has to do with building up people’s skills, moral, and the overall culture.

> The genre reached its peak in the early to mid 1990s, with some of the best-remembered LucasArts and Sierra titles making their appearance thereabouts. arstechnica.com/gaming/20…