My First Release Weekend

At the time of writing this post, I am 41 years old, I've been in the business of writing software for over 20 years, and I have never ever experienced a release weekend. Until now. It's now nearly 1 pm. I've been here since 7 am. There are a dozen or so different applications which … Continue reading My First Release Weekend →

Scale or Fail

I've heard a lot of people say something like "but we don't need huge scalability" when pushed for reason why their architecture is straight out of the 90's. "We're not big enough for devops" is another regular excuse. But while it's certainly true that many enterprises don't need to worry so much about high loads … Continue reading Scale or Fail →

Avoiding Delivery Hell

Some enterprises have grown their technical infrastructure to the point where dev ops and continuous deployment are second nature. The vast majority of enterprises are still on their journey, or don't even realise there is a journey for them to take. Businesses aren't generally built around great software development practices - many businesses are set … Continue reading Avoiding Delivery Hell →

What’s Slowing Your Business?

There are lots of problems that prevent businesses from responding to market trends as quickly as they'd like. Many are not IT related, some are. I'd like to discuss a few problems that I see over and over again, and maybe present some useful solutions. As you read this, please remember that there are always … Continue reading What’s Slowing Your Business? →

Getting FitNesse to Work

Sample code here. Recently I've been looking into Specification by Example, which people keep defining to me as BDD done the right way. Specification by Example fully implemented includes the idea of an executable specification. A concept that has led me back to FitNesse having given it the cold shoulder for the last six or seven years. … Continue reading Getting FitNesse to Work →

Periodic Table of DevOps Tools

Really useful reference - I hope they keep it up to date... Periodic Table of DevOps Tools Thanks XebiaLabs! Also, the ultimate devops tool chest...

Integration Testing Behaviour with Mountebank

Developer's machine > dev shared environment > staging environment > UAT > production. Probably not exactly how everyone structures their delivery pipelines but probably not that far off. It allows instant feedback on whether what a developer is writing actually works with the code other developers are writing. And that's a really good thing. Unfortunately, it misses something... Each environment … Continue reading Integration Testing Behaviour with Mountebank →