The document discusses the evolution and competitive landscape of technology in software development, focusing on microservices, cloud computing, and agile methodologies. It emphasizes the need for rapid iteration, innovation, and organizational change to keep pace with modern business demands and competition. Key insights include the importance of using disruptive technologies, decentralized processes, and appropriate metrics for measuring success.

1. Go Faster!
Tech, Process and Organization
Fred George
fredgeorge@acm.org
@fgeorge52
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 1

2. Fred George
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 3
Consulting Roles
• Change Agent
• Disruptor
• “Hand grenade I am throwing
into development”
• CTO describing Fred to his Vice
President

3. Industry “Hot” Topics
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 4
MicroServices
Cloud
Docker
Dev/Ops Full-stack
developer
Agile
Lean startup
Cassandra
Event bus
MVP (minimum
viable product
Programmer
anarchy
No-SQL
One Hacker
Way

4. Why: New Problem Domains:
The Cynefin Framework
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 5
Simple
ComplicatedComplex
Chaotic
Cause a Effect
Cause aaa Effect
Effect? Cause?
Cause ? Effect
Disorder

5. Why: Competition is coming
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 6
• Enablement through technologies
• Cloud computing
• Ubiquitous, high bandwidth
• Languages (and supporting frameworks)
• Recognition of business opportunities
• Silicon Valley innovators as role models
• Accelerating business needs
• Few inhibitors for global competitors
• Reduction of entry barriers for niche competitors
• Micro-marketing to specific customer niches

6. How Fast Can You Go?
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 7

7. Iteration Length in Agile Age
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 8
1 mo.
20152000 2005 2010
3 wks.
2 wks.
1 wk.
1 day
XP
XP
XP
XP
SCRUM* *2-3 months

8. Project Delivery Cycles
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 9
5 yrs.
1980 1990 2000
1 mon.
1 week
1 day
2010
1 year
ProjectDuration(log)
Waterfall
Waterfall
Agile
Agile
A2
A2
Waterfall
w OO

9. How Fast Can You Go?
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 10
Deployment to Production Every 3.5 minutes

10. Inhibitors
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 11

11. •Cloud exploitation
•Specialized databases
•New programming languages
•Open source frameworks (users and creators)
•Continuous releases
“Valley Tech”
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 12

12. Hardware Lead Times
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 13
6 mo.
1990 1995 2005
30 min.
1 week
1 day
2015
1 mo.
2000 2010
5 min.
5 sec.
Orderleadtimes(log)
Data Center
Virtual
Machines
Docker
Commercial
Cloud
Capacity planning?
Dedicated ops team?

13. Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 14
10
1
1000
100
100,0001 10 100 1000 10,000
Size (loc)
NumberofServices
MicroServices
Rails / Java Zone
SO
A
Workshop
Forward
Netflix
Services Impact

14. 0MQ
0MQ 0MQ
0MQ 0MQ 0MQ
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 15
Kafka
Service
Emerging: Event Bus

15. New Architecture Patterns
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 16
Bus
Service
Service
Service
Need
Need
Need
Sol’n’s
Sol’n
•Variants easy
•Graceful degradation
Choose
Sol’n

16. Incremental Applications
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 17
Event Bus
Rental
offers
Car
rent
Legacy
server
Brand
offers
Location
offers
Segmentation
Membership
CarRent.com Login
Sally
A B

17. Databases:
Holy Grail or Ball-and-Chain?
• Fortune 100 view:
• Entity-oriented; consistency essential
• As few as possible
• MicroService view:
• Shift to Event Bus, plus
• DB per MicroService (if persistence needed)
• Poly-glot (various NoSQL, SQL) + event buses
• Few (10%) writable; even fewer transactional
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 18

18. Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 19
Rental
offers
Car
rent
Legacy
server
Brand
offers
Location
offers
Segmentation
Membership
CarRent.com Login
Sally
A B Rental
offers
Event
publishing
Solution
collecting
300ms
responder
Redis

19. Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 20
Rental
offers
Car
rent
Legacy
server
Brand
offers
Location
offers
Segmentation
Membership
CarRent.com Login
Sally
A B
Membership
enrichment
ETL Key-value

20. Open Source: Netflix
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 21

21. Open Source: Docker
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 22

22. Disruptive Technology:
Functional Languages
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 23
•Middleware exploiting:
• Kafka written in Scala
• RabbitMQ written in Erlang
•Case study: MailOnline page rendering
• Legacy system: 130K loc Java/JSP’s
• Replacement: 4,000 loc Clojure

23. Mitigate Process Inhibitors
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 24

24. Understand Your Problem
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 25
Complex
Simple
Complicated
Chaotic
Cause a Effect
Cause aaa Effect
Effect? Cause?
Cause ? Effect
Disorder

25. Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 26
Requirements
Trying ideas
“Experimentation
drives Innovation”
New Vision of “What” to Build

26. Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 27
Task
Story
Feature
Project
Initiative
Co-Credit: Greg Reiser, ThoughtWorks
Re-think Interactions

27. • Bad metrics:
• Lines of code
• Development stages and milestones met
• Business success metrics:
• Sales, clicks, registrations, customer retention, etc.
Measure What Matters
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 28

28. Mitigate Organization
Inhibitors
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 29

29. Over-Specialization
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved.
•Theory:
• Specialist are more productive
•Practice:
• Overhead of communication is under-estimated
• Unbalanced workload creates delays
30

30. Specialization Institutionalized
with Titles
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 31
Case Study:
•50 IT professionals
•25+ titles
•0 people understanding projects

31. Solution: Fix the Titles
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 32
Step 1: Define competence in key technologies
Strategic Technologies
• Ruby
• Java
• iOS
• Android
• DB (SQL and non-SQL)
• Testing
• OO Design
• Node.js
• HTML/CSS/JavaScript
• …

32. New Titles for New Projects
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 33
Not competent in a
key technology
Competent in a key
technology
Expert in a key
technology
Competent in 5-7
key technologies
Expert in 3-5 key
technologies

33. “Fix the Furniture”*
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 34*Kent Beck, XP Explained

34. Non-dedicated Leadership
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 35

35. Bring Work to the Team…
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 36
Not musical
chairs for each
small project

36. Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 37
MicroServices
Cloud
Docker
Dev/Ops Full-stack
developer
Agile
Lean startup
Cassandra
Event bus
MVP (minimum
viable product
Programmer
anarchy
No-SQL
Managerless
process

37. Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 38
MicroServices
Cloud
Docker
Dev/Ops Full-stack
developer
Agile
Lean startup
Cassandra
Event bus
MVP (minimum
viable product
Programmer
anarchy
No-SQL
Managerless
process

38. Project Delivery Cycles
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 39
NRK
NRK
5 yrs.
1980 1990 2000
1 mon.
1 week
1 day
2010
1 year
ProjectDuration(log)
Waterfall
Waterfall
Agile
Agile
Waterfall
w OO

39. Acknowledgements
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 40
•Neil Hutchinson – Founder of Forward
• Adopting a “Fail Fast” culture
•Carl Gaywood
• Former programmer who wanted to Go Faster
•Paul Ingles and Mike Jones
• Implementers of “Experimentation drives innovation”

40. More Information…
•Google:
• MicroService Architecture for videos
• MicroXchg 2015, 2016 conferences
• MicroService track in most conferences
• Programmer Anarchy for managerless teams
• Docker for latest container deployment
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 41

41. Go Faster:
Tech, Process, & Organization
Fred George
fredgeorge@acm.org
@fgeorge52
Copyright © 2015 by Fred George. All rights reserved. 42