Brownfield

The relational database approach where all data is normalized and business logic runs in stored procedures creates maintainability problems that create unlimited risk and cost over time. Every year of continued database operation puts the product and organization further behind.

This is a brief update to share that I switched out the shell version for a golang version. This change made the tweeting mechanism smarter while reducing the container size to 1/5th of what it was.

This is not related to brownfield technology, but it is something that can be done to help with handbook updates and other non-code sorts of projects. This recipe has some interesting ingredients such as GitLab CI, a Twitter API warpper for Go, Twitter Apps, GitLab Pages workflow, A Docker Container, and the route-map file.

Maybe you’ve noticed recently, or a long time ago, that getting stuff done just isn’t so easy anymore. Redoubling efforts doesn’t seem to make up the gap. Intentions and expectations are lowered and still quality or schedules are suffering. It’s not an easy cycle to break, but there are lots of approaches to try!

No Factor Apps is what we can call classic applications that people have been building since the dawn of time. This is a reference to the “factors” used by the folks at 12factor.net which is a fantastic resource for what approaches to use and how they contribute to improved delivery quality and speed.

Organizations with policies established during a time where colocation was the only way to work are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to suddenly remote productivity. The work from home lifestyle of taking a day to send a few emails but mostly be unproductive was begrudgingly accepted as an infrequent quality of life boost. Reversing that trend, during a pandemic, with kids home and elevated stress levels, it’s going to be tough.

After attending the ATARC IRS Container Forum late last year, I was inspired to share some of my perspective. Between the folks who spoke at that forum and my own interactions with federal agencies, it was clear that waterfall was leaking into DevOps.

Agile software development has revolutionized the way private sector organizations build software. The primary tenets are that all companies are software companies, software is never done, and requirements always change. What does that mean for the federal space?

Organizations of all sizes fall victim to the wrong goal trap. Anywhere with more than 2 levels of management have intermediate layers with the goal of team growth or revenue increase at the expense of the larger system. Growing a DevOps team could lead to less efficient operations if they become an integral part to everyday operations. It would be better for them to be constrained and simply provide infrastructure and templates to the developers.

My favorite example of “rule beating” is the secure network that reduces usability to the point that people use hot spots and other mechanisms to complete their work. If you want developers to work, they need stackoverflow.