logging

New eBook on Continuous Delivery with Windows and .NET

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

Back in 2010 when Jez Humble and Dave Farley wrote their ground-breaking book Continuous Delivery, the Windows and .NET platforms lagged behind the Linux/Mac world in terms of automation capability. That is no longer the case – every core feature in Windows and .NET now has a PowerShell API and all the core tooling needed for Continuous Delivery – package management, artifact repositories, build servers, deployment pipelines tools, infrastructure automation, monitoring,and logging – are all now available natively on Windows/.NET.

Chris O’Dell (@ChrisAnnODell) and I decided we should explain how to make Continuous Delivery work with Windows and .NET, and thanks to the great editorial team at O’Reilly, we’ve published a short eBook:

The dedicated book website is at CDwithWindows.net and O’Reilly have published the first chapter of the book online as an article: Introduction to Continuous Delivery with Windows. We’d love your feedback: book@cdwithwindows.net

UPDATE: we’ll be at both PIPELINE Conference (March 23 2016) and WinOps Conference (May 24 2016) with printed copies of the book.

Note: we began writing the book in August 2015, and it’s astonishing (and exciting!) how much has changed in the 8 months since then, with Windows Nano, Azure and Windows support for Docker and containers, .NET Core, SQL Server on Linux, and even SSH for Windows. These and more recent developments do not feature in the book – perhaps we’ll do an updated version soon.

Notes on ‘team responsibilities in cloud-native operations’ (Pete Mounce)

Posted on July 10, 2015July 31, 2015 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

Summary: Pete Mounce (@petemounce) from Just Eat gave a compelling talk at the London Continuous Delivery meetup group on ‘team responsibilities in cloud-native operations’. I found the talk hugely engaging, with loads of detail applicable to many organisations. Here are my notes from the meetup.

I captured my notes as slides:

Update: the video of Pete’s talk is here on Vimeo:

There were several specific points made by Pete that were interesting for me:

Continue reading Notes on ‘team responsibilities in cloud-native operations’ (Pete Mounce)

Operability: a DevOps cornerstone – new eBook from HighOps

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

One of the driving forces behind DevOps is the increasing prevalence of complex, distributed software systems which calls for a substantially different approach to building ‘business’ software systems: an approach that anticipates and expects failures, transient behaviour, emergent states, and unpredictability; and ensures that failure responses are gradual, graceful, and graphable.

‘Making software work well’ in this dynamic, interconnected world is the focus of Software Operability, a subject I have been writing and speaking about for some time.

I recently began working with IT operations experts HighOps (@gotHighOps) and we have published a free eBook Operability: a DevOps Cornerstone. The book covers the fundamentals of operability, why it’s relevant, how to build and sustain a focus on operability,and how operability relates to both DevOps and IT service management approaches such as ITIL.

If you lead the Technology division, head up a software development department or IT operations department, or lead a development or operations team, and want to understand why and how to make your software systems work better, then this book is for you. If you are involved in Service Transition or Service Operation, this eBook will help you to make the case for a strong focus on the operational aspects of the software being delivered. Similarly, if your role is a Software Architect, you will find here sound practical guidance for improving how your software works
in Production.

Download the HighOps eBook ‘Operability: a DevOps Cornerstone’ here.

What Team Structure is Right for DevOps to Flourish?

Posted on October 22, 2013August 23, 2022 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

Update (2022): my company Conflux now offers consulting and training around DevOps topologies and related practices like Team Topologies.

Update (2019): I have co-authored a book – Team Topologies – that adds brand new material to these (original) DevOps Topologies patterns. In the book we cover dynamic organization evolution, team interaction patterns, the strategic use of Conway’s Law, monolith decomposition, and many more topics.

See teamtopologies.com and follow us on Twitter at @TeamTopologies for updates. The book is published by IT Revolution Press (Sept 2019).

**Team Topologies**: organizing business and technology teams for fast flow
Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais
IT Revolution Press, Sept 2019

Update (2016): A new version of these DevOps team topologies is now here: devopstopologies.com

DevOpsTopologies-screenshot — *Find more DevOps team topologies at devopstopologies.com*

The new version has many new topologies that we’ve encountered in the wild and we’re taking pull requests on Github for additions and changes.

The primary goal of any DevOps setup within an organisation is to improve the delivery of value for customers and the business, not in itself to reduce costs, increase automation, or drive everything from configuration management; this means that different organisations might need different team structures in order for effective Dev and Ops collaboration to take place.

Butterflies in a Museum — Photo by James Emery: http://www.flickr.com/photos/emeryjl/3535989711/

So what team structure is right for DevOps to flourish? Clearly, there is no magic conformation or team topology which will suit every organisation. However, it is useful to characterise a small number of different models for team structures, some of which suit certain organisations better than others. By exploring the strengths and weaknesses of these team structures (or ‘topologies’), we can identify the team structure which might work best for DevOps practices in our own organisations, taking into account Conway’s Law.

Continue reading What Team Structure is Right for DevOps to Flourish?

Who Owns My Operability?

Posted on April 5, 2013April 24, 2013 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

Includes recommended reading for software operability: SoftwareOperability.com

Software Operability

Operability is not something which can be ‘bolted on’ or retrofitted to software after it goes live; we need to design and build our software with operability as a first-class concern. You don’t build a bridge, then try to add load-bearing capabilities at the end of the project — but most software projects try to do exactly that, typically with costly results.

Ultimately, the product owner should be responsible for ensuring that operational requirements are prioritized alongside end-user features. If you are responsible for the software product or service, there is only one answer to the question