Mirco Hering

While the popularity of observability is a somewhat recent development, it is exciting to see what benefits it can bring to testing. Find out more in this post.

I am sure by now most people understand that there is strong correlation between employee satisfaction and business results. If you need more convincing have a read of these two articles: Forbes & Research Paper So how do you best go about measuring it? On my current project I have decided to go with the following 4 questions: I would recommend this account and my project as a good place to work I have the tools and resources to do my role well I rarely think about rolling off this account or project My role makes good use of my skills and abilities For those of you who have read Jez Humble’s “Lean Enterprise”, these questions will look familiar. I have adopted them to the project setting that I work within. We have just set out on a cultural transformation to become truly Agile and adopt DevOps in a large complex legacy environment. To me measuring the above will give me the best indicator that we are doing the right thing. Of course there will be other measures who determine the quality of the outcomes and the levels of automation among others, but changing the culture of an organisation is critical if your Agile and DevOps adoption is to be successful. I will report back throughout that journey to tell you what my experiences is with the above questions. IT delivery is complex and it is not always clear what the right solution is. I found in the past that it is near impossible to create processes and tools that work by itself, you need to have the right mindset that people use the processes and tools with the right intent. It’s very frustrating when you implement great automation only to see a few months later that the solution has degraded. It is with hindsight that I understand that the solution is to not just implement process and tools but to instill the right culture and mindset for progression, a culture where we blamelessly identify a way to avoid the same mistake again rather than looking for the person in fault, a culture where we strive for automation and lean processes and are not concerned about the size of our teams or budgets, a culture where you don’t have to protect your fiefdom and where you are happy to collaborate with others to solve problems no matter where the root cause lies. I think we all in IT need to understand this dynamic between employee satisfaction and outcomes better, I for sure believe that I have come across a magic potion that I aim to bring to all my future projects. About these ads

These days a lot of organizations talk about Multi-Speed IT, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on this. I think the concept has been around for a while but now there is a nice label to associate this idea with. Let’s start by looking at why Multi-Speed IT is important. The idea is best illustrated by a picture of two interlocking gears of different sizes and by using a simple example to explain the concept. Different Speeds for Different Needs One easy way to recall what multi-speed IT looks like is to remember that there are multiple speeds for multiple needs. This is to say that there are different IT programs that may be most useful at various speeds. Some departments and applications need to move very rapidly, but others can move at a slower pace that works best for them. Regardless of which department you are focused on at the moment, it is important to know that it will have specialized needs that you need to look after, and that is why so many people are now looking at multi-speed IT as the best way to accomplish what they set out to accomplish. The smaller gear moves much faster than the larger one, but where the two gears interlock they remain aligned to not stop the motion. But what does this mean in reality? Think about a banking app on your mobile. Your bank might update the app on a weekly basis with new functionality like reporting and/or an improved user interface. That is a reasonable fast release cycle. The mainframe system that sits in the background and provides the mobile app with your account balance and transaction details does not have to change at the same speed. In fact, it might only have to provide a new service for the mobile app once every quarter. Nonetheless, the changes between those two systems need to align when new functionality is rolled out. However, it doesn’t mean both systems need to release at the same speed. In general, the customer-facing systems are the fast applications (Systems of Engagement, Digital) and the slower ones are the Systems of Record or backend systems. The release cycles should take this into consideration. So how do you get ready for the Multi-Speed IT Delivery Model? Release Strategy (Agile) – Identify functionality that requires changes in multiple systems and ones that can be done in isolation. If you follow an Agile approach, you can align every n-th release for releasing functionality that is aligned while the releases in between can deliver isolated changes for the fast-moving applications. Application Architecture – Use versioned interface agreements so that you can decouple the gears (read applications) temporarily. This means you can release a new version of a backend system or a front-end system without impacting the current functionality of the other. Once the other system catches up, new functionality becomes available across the system. This allows you to keep to your individual release schedule, which in turn means delivery is a lot less complex and interdependent. In the picture I used above, think of this as the clutch that temporarily disengages the gears. Technical Practices and Tools (DevOps) – If the application architecture decoupling is the clutch, then the technical practices and tools are the grease. This is where DevOps comes into the picture. The whole idea of Multi-Speed IT is to make the delivery of functionality less interdependent. On the flip side, you need to spend more effort on getting the right practices and tools in place to support this. For example, you want to make sure that you can quickly test the different interface versions with automated testing, you need to have good version control to make sure you have in place the right components for each application, and you also want to make sure you can manage your code line very well through abstractions and branching where required. And the basics of configuration management, packaging, and deployment will become even more important as you want to reduce the number of variables you have to deal with in your environments. You better remove those variables introduced through manual steps by having these processes completely automated. Testing strategies – Given that you are now dealing with multiple versions of components being in the environment at the same time, you have to rethink your testing strategies. The rules of combinatorics make it very clear that it only takes a few different variables before it becomes unmanageable to test all permutations. So we need to think about different testing strategies that focus on valid permutations and risk profiles. After all, functionality that is not yet live requires less testing than the ones that will go live next. The above points cover the technical aspects but to get there you will also have to solve some of the organizational challenges. Let me just highlight 3 of them here: Partnership with delivery partners – It will be important to choose your partners wisely. Perhaps it helps to think of your partner ecosystem in three categories: Innovators (the ones who work with you in innovative spaces and with new technologies), Workhorses(the ones who support your core business applications that continue to change) and Commodities (the ones who run legacy applications that don’t require much new functionality and attention). It should be clear that you need to treat them differently in regards to contracts and incentives. I will blog later about the best way to incentivize your workhorses, the area that I see most challenges in. Application Portfolio Management - Of course, to find the right partner you first need to understand what your needs are. Look across your application portfolio and determine where your applications sit across the following dimensions: Importance to business, exposure to customers, frequency of change, and volume of change. Based on this you can find the right partner to optimize the outcome for each application. Governance – Last but not least, governance is very important. In a multi-speed IT world you will need flexible governance. One size fits all will not be good enough. You will need lightweight system-driven governance for your high-speed applications and you can probably afford a more PowerPoint/Excel-driven manual governance for your slower-changing applications. If you can run status reports of live systems (like Jira, RTC, or TFS) for your fast applications you are another step closer to mastering the multi-speed IT world.