Twenty start-ups a year Without going crazy

Christopher Marsh Technical Architect, AKQA

Twenty start-ups a year Without going crazy

Christopher Marsh Technical Architect, AKQA

Effort to completion

Pain to completion

Effort to completion

Effort to completion

Predictability!

Predictability!

Lean philosophy

Predictability!

Lean philosophy

Culture of

code craftsmanship

Predictability!

Lean philosophy

Culture of

code craftsmanship

Continuous delivery

Lean philosophy “Lean Startup isn't about being

cheap [but is about] being less wasteful and still doing

things that are big.”

-- Eric Ries

Focus on producing output Let software engineers engineer Let project managers manage

Morning stand-up Who’s it really for?

Meeting invitations Auto-reject the unknown

“Can you spare me 5 minutes?” ...takes a minimum of an hour

Create design through doing Things always change before you’re finished anyway

Understand architecture vs design Refactoring architecture is hard

“Architecture represents the significant design decisions that shape a system, where significant is measured by cost of change.”

-- Grady Booch

Prototype responsibly Destroy when done

Don’t build frameworks Reusable code emerges naturally

Minimise documentation effort Most documentation is a liability, not an asset

Create architecture documents Don’t create design documents

Write self documenting code Self maintaining documentation requires zero extra effort

Optimise communication efficiency Create knowledge sharing tools

Culture of code craftsmanship “You can’t take pride and

honour in something that you can’t be held accountable for.”

-- Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin

Develop a green build mentality No excuses, if you’re red - you’re dead

Don’t worry about it Force a build, it will pass next time

I didn’t break it So I don’t need to fix it

That’s always broken I can’t remember the last time the codebase was updated

I’m looking at it now But it looks like it’s going to take a while to fix

The rules Never commit on a broken build Fix broken build within 10 minutes The team is responsible for the build

Seek constant peer review You work with smart people, so help them to help you

Target collaboration effort Eliminate coder’s block by pair programming

Shout when you need help It’s not a sign of weakness

Perform code reviews Automate as much as possible

Create information radiators Increasing technical debt is difficult when no one wants to give you credit

Look further than technology Respect your colleagues

Reduce complexity Communicate simply

Reduce complexity Communicate simply

Use an existing tool Or mix and match

Continuous Delivery “Reduce [..] the time it takes from deciding to make a change [..] to having it available to users.” -- Jez Humble/David Farley

Create deployment pipelines Make every commit a potential release candidate.

Example pipeline

Example pipeline

Example pipeline

Example pipeline

Example pipeline

Example pipeline

Example pipeline

Unit tests

Acceptance tests

Integration tests

Manual tests

Capacity tests

Number of tests A sanity check

Pipeline dashboard ThoughtWorks Go

Maintain infrastructure as code Consistency means that no server is a snowflake

“Production-like” starts early Configure development workstations automatically

Include all infrastructure Not just web and application servers

Look at Cloud options Built-in configuration options make things easier

Put deployments in the right hands Deployments are business motivated, but technology led

What the business has...

Deploy me!

What the business needs...

What the business (really) needs...

Deploy me!

Capacity Deploy me!

Production

Deploy me!

Build Deploy me!

QA

Script everything Separate what changes from what doesn’t

“Production-like” all the way Even if this means less efficiency in the pipeline

And finally...

“Theory is splendid but until put into practice , it is valueless.”

-- James Cash Penney

Discuss!