I have a fondness for philosophy. I’m about three classes short of a degree, and every few years I tell myself one day I’ll finish it. Thus, I am very familiar with what is known in statistics—and logic—as a post hoc fallacy, from which we get the saying “correlation is not causation.” This is the […]
How to Manage and Engage Remote Engineering Teams
As engineering teams look to remain remote or hybrid, executives need to fundamentally change how these teams are managed. After tackling the tactical aspects of a distributed workforce—like home office equipment, a comfortable space where employees can get work done and reliable meeting, calendar and communication tools—more nuanced issues come into play. Before the COVID-19 […]
Report Finds Software Engineering Productivity Gains
An analysis of the time 23,000 software engineers spent working in 2021 that was published this week by Jellyfish, a provider of an engineering management platform (EMP), finds cycle times on average were down to 12.6 days, representing a 12.3% decline over 2020. The report, however, also finds commits were down 4% year-over-year, while the […]
Prioritizing Scalability, Reliability and Security in Engineering
As digital products and services are more deeply embedded in critical industries and infrastructure and the implications of problems grow in scope, engineering organizations are renewing their focus on building platforms that are scalable, reliable and secure. More importantly, they are recognizing that this isn’t the responsibility of an SRE or CSO, it’s an ethos […]
Why Boring Tech is Best to Avoid a Microservices Mess
Microservices are all the rage. A Forrester study found that 76% of enterprises were rearchitecting applications for microservices. At the same time, microservices are definitely not a silver bullet. Among those already using microservices in production, one study found that 59% said each microservice added increased operational challenges such as data management. Even more concerning, […]
Best of 2019: The Time Has Come for an Engineering Approach to DevOps
As we close out 2019, we at staging-devopsy.kinsta.cloud wanted to highlight the five most popular articles of the year. Following is the third in our weeklong series of the Best of 2019. Do you want to know how to do DevOps? Are you doing DevOps but not satisfied with the results you are getting? DevOps […]
How to Become a Great Engineering Manager
I wrote recently about the attributes of a 10x software engineer and a 20x one. Consequently, I received a few comments suggesting I create a similar list for engineering managers. I checked online and found a few articles, but none conveyed a full list in my mind. If you consider that software development efficiency has […]
Cuba Embraces DevOps, Despite Infrastructure Challenges
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking at the second DevOpsDays event in Cuba alongside some great technologists from across the United States, Europe and Latin America. The conference was held in a beautiful hotel in Varadero overlooking a marina right by the beach. Varadero is approximately two hours by car from […]
Bridging the Gap Between ITSM and Software Engineering
Considering the individual roles of IT service management (ITSM) and software engineers, it seems obvious they should work closely together. ITSM tracks internal and external customer issues, and engineering fixes code-related issues (such as defects) that IT cannot fix on its own. However, more often than not, coordination between these two departments is poor, […]
Swarms: Adapting Guilds To Scale Agility
In my first article in this series, “Using Guilds to Combat Information Silos,” I reviewed the adoption of guilds at xMatters. As our company has grown, we’ve used guilds to keep critical information from languishing in silos—as often happens when an organization scales. Guilds have helped our engineers apply their creativity and critical problem-solving skills […]