This document discusses Sonian's process for managing configuration code across versions. It describes a three stage process they implemented to improve their workflows. Stage 1 focused on using Jira for tickets and cleaning up technical debt. Stage 2 added deployment checklists and ownership. Stage 3 involved building internal tools to support their processes. The document outlines their development and release processes, which include branching strategies to ensure changes are tested before moving to production.

1. Team Development
Workflows
Managing Cookbooks, Roles & Databags Across Versions
Chef Boston Meetup
Aug 28th 2012
Pete Cheslock
Sonian

2. Caveats & Thoughts
 I’m not advocating the Right™ way to do any one thing
here.
 This works for us (Sonian) – it may not work for you.
YMMV
 A good process evolves over time. What we started is
not where we are today and not where we’ll be in 6
months.
 Ownership – set it and forget it won’t work here.

3. Our Problem
 Many different software stacks with separate customer
SLA’s
 Small changes could have large consequences.
 Many people making changes to branches (inside and
outside our team).
 High velocity – many hot-fixes – limited testing – Zero
Tracking.
 Technical Debt (An easy one to blame stuff on)

4. Stage 1
 Ticket Bankruptcy – Make the move to Jira
 Invest in cleanup of technical debt
 Specifically in our Git Repository
 Split the team into Proactive/Reactive Team
 Decrease distractions
 Increase focus – decrease context switching
 Introduction of myself as the “buffer”
 New Feature Requests
 Hotfixes or Sysadmin type tasks
 Support our Engineering and Support Team

5. Stage 2
 Deployment Checklists
 Peer reviewed – across departments
 “Follow the checklist”
 Deploy Ownership – Team Based Deploys
 Make our chef runs faster/more efficient.
 Cookbook refactor, invest in knife plugins, LWRP,
overall quality.
 Monitoring, Metrics, Security

6. Stage 3
 Build apps to support our technology
 External
 Sensu (https://github.com/sensu) (MIT)
 SCLI (https://github.com/sonian/scli) IBM Smartcloud
command line tool (MIT)
 Mise En Place (Soon to be released with MIT license)
 Fog (https://github.com/fog) - Contributions to Smartcloud
and VPC support.
 Internal
 Security
 Automation

8. Taking Code from Idea to
Deployment
 Sprint Planning (3 week Dev – 1 week QA)
 Create Jira Story – Prioritize in next sprint unless
needed now.
 All Chef branches need Jira stories
 Commit, Merge, Push, Test
 All Jira stories (and branches) live in QA for regression
testing
 After QA Approval – merge to master

9. Development Simplicity
Dev QA
Master
(Daily) (Daily)
Cut Branch
Merge Make Changes
(eng-9999)

10. Production Complexity
Cherry-Picks Forward
release/2012- release/2012-
master
07-01 08-01
base/2012- base/2012- Rebase & Squash Commit
Branches Backwards
07-01 08-01
Cut Branch
eng-9999

11. Why?
 Can’t have untested changes make it out to production.
Small changes could have unintended consequences.
 Sets of chef cookbooks and application code (often tied
together) were tested at the same time.
 Important to get the processes in place prior to
investment in automation.
 Technical Debt (The scapegoat)

14. Questions?
 Contact me:
 Email: pete.cheslock@sonian.net
 Twitter: @petecheslock