In high-tech, we have a terrible predilection for finding a good tool and abusing it until we hate it. I’ve written several “Use the right tool for the job” articles and posts over the years, most notably an examination of trying to make one programming language (or another) into an all-purpose solution. We’re thankfully past […]
GraphQL Documentation Generators: How They Work and Why They Matter
GraphQL is an open source query language developed by Facebook that provides a more efficient, powerful and flexible alternative to traditional REST APIs for fetching and manipulating data over the web. It allows clients to specify the shape and structure of the data they need and receive exactly that, no more and no less. Unlike […]
Documentation in Agile: Challenges and Trends in 2023
Agile documentation refers to the creation and maintenance of documentation in an agile software development process. It emphasizes “just enough” documentation that is necessary for the current iteration, preferring documentation that responds to specific needs over extensive upfront documentation. The goal is to provide clear and concise information to support the development team while keeping […]
Turnover, Documentation and Missing Links
When employee turnover spikes, IT in general and DevOps teams in particular need to be prepared. At the time of this writing, the stock market is roiling, and DevOps compensation is bouncing up. This has an impact on turnover because many in DevOps (and nearly all senior positions) have compensation that includes stock—stock that may […]
Documenting: Don’t Build Your Replacement’s Nightmare
Want to reduce headaches tomorrow? Document everything today About once a year I feel the need to remind you that you are creating technical debt. DevOps is good stuff, and most shops got over the “whatever a given project team decides” multiplication of services pretty quickly, but every line of DevOps code you write is […]
Don’t Expect Miracles
Let’s run some fun scenarios to start this one off, shall we? “We’ll decide what language to use at a meeting next month. Until then, get to writing code!” “We might deploy internally, though Azure is a strong option, and we’ve discussed GCP. Now get operations up and running, we’ll tell you when we’ve decided.” […]
Resurrecting the CMDB Through a Singular Path to Production
Change consistency (or the predictability of how change is deployed) followed by change transparency (or the visibility into the state of change at any stage in the software development life cycle [SDLC]) are two key benefits of embracing a highly functioning enterprise-class DevOps set of services. Most organizations are attempting to transform themselves from a […]
Documenting DevOps: Agile, Automation and Continuous Documentation
Chris Riley former GigaOm analyst, O’Reilly author, staging-devopsy.kinsta.cloud featured writer and founder of Fixate I/O has written an outstanding report on the key role documentation must play in the modern software development lifecyle. Agile or DevOps, automated or not, we live in a continuous IT era. So why shouldn’t documentation be continuous as well? Riley’s […]
Continuous Documentation
Is documentation dead in DevOps? Yes and no. It is transformed, it is automatic, and it is actionable.