Shaun Abram
Technology and Leadership Blog
Blog post summary: Accountability in Software Development by Kent Beck
A summary of Accountability in Software Development, by Kent Beck
Tags: accountability, kentbeck, summary
2022 VOID Report Summary
The following is a summary of the 2022 VOID report.
The original is ~10,000 words. This is ~1500.
Tags: incidents, summary, voidreport
Webinar summary: How to write job postings that actually work.
The following are some of the key points I took from this “How to write job postings that actually work” webinar, from Katrina Kibben, the Founder & CEO of Three Ears Media.
Tags: recruitment, summary
Blog post summary: We need to talk about testing
I liked this “We need to talk about testing” post from Dan North. It’s about what testing actually means and how programmers and testers can work together. A summary (or copy & paste of the parts that I found most interesting, with some comments) below…
The purpose of testing is to increase confidence for stakeholders through evidence.
Tags: quality, summary, tdd, Testing, unittesting
Blog post summary: Shipping fast and safe by Kesha Mykhailov at Intercom
I like this “Shipping fast and safe: Building a culture of low-risk learning” article by Kesha Mykhailov at Intercom.
Some highlights…
Book summary: Shape Up
“Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters” is a book from Ryan Singer about how Basecamp do product development.
The following is mostly just copy & pastes of the parts I found most interesting. Typically, the more detailed the notes, the more useful I found the chapter. The original book itself though isn’t a difficult read (and it’s free online), so I recommend checking it out directly.
Tags: basecamp, planning, productmanagement, projectmanagement, shapeup, summary
Blog post summary: Prioritizing with Cost of Delay
Prioritizing with Cost of Delay is an article by Jeff Palmer (web, twitter, linkedin).
This article had me engrossed with the opening paragraph. It is a short article (6 minute) read, so I suggest reading it directly, but find a summary below, mainly for my own benefit.
Tags: costofdelay, summary
Book chapter summary: Managing Incidents
This is a slight abridged version of Chapter 14, “Managing Incidents, by Andrew Stribblehill from the excellent “SRE Book“. (Original is 2200 words, this is 1200)
Tags: sitereliabilityengineering, sre, summary, thesrebook
Book Summary: Accelerate
Accelerate: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations is a book by by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim. It is a follow on from the State of DevOps Reports that Forsgren and Humble used to publish (and which I wrote about before in Development and delivery practices for team success). I highly recommend buying the book, but here are some chapter summaries for the highlights.
Tags: accelerate, books, cicd, devops, metrics, mttr, stateofdevops, summary
Article summary: The future of work is written
“The future of work is written” is an article from Juan Pablo Buriticá from Stripe published on increment.com.
This is a summary of the keys points from the article, but the original is definitely worth reading, and not long itself (the original is 2300 words; this is 250).
Tags: communication, documentation, summary
Blog post summary: What is an Engineering Manager?
I liked the short What is an Engineering Manager? post on the AWS blog (from David Ives @ Pusher). This is a summary, but the original is worth reading and not much longer…
Tags: developmentmanager, devmanager, leadership, management, summary
Blog post summary: Automating safe, hands-off deployments at AWS
AWS’s Clare Liguori wrote an excellent blog post on Automating safe, hands-off deployments.
This is a summary (1,700 words, vs 5,300 in the original) and mostly just a copy & paste of highlights. I have also skipped some of the sections that are at scales larger than most folks deal with (e.g. global releases across 26 regions!).
Tags: aws, cicd, continuousdelivery, continuousdeployment, summary
Blog post summary: Domain-Oriented Microservice Architecture at Uber
“Domain-Oriented Microservice Architecture at Uber” is a blog post on the Uber engineering blog. There were some comments about the post not giving credit to prior art, which I think is fair, but it is a useful post none the less. Uber provide an interesting approach to classifying and organizing their (2,200!) microservices, by using the concepts of Domains, Layers, Gateways and Extensions.
This is a shortened version here (1,200 words, vs 3,800 in the original), since I tend to learn by creating summaries, but it is mostly just a copy & paste, so check out the original with diagrams etc if you’re really interested.
Tags: microservices, summary, uber
eBook Summary: What Is SRE?
“What Is SRE? An Introduction to Site Reliability Engineering” (registration required but free), is an ebook by Kurt Andersen & Craig Sebenik, published by O’Reilly. The following is a summary (abridged copy and paste) of the parts I found most useful, with a few of my own notes. The original is about 9,000 words; this is about 2,000.
Tags: books, sitereliabilityengineering, sre, summary
Report Summary: Accelerate State of DevOps 2019
This is an abridged version of The Accelerate State of DevOps Report 2019; essentially a cut and paste of the most salient parts. The original is about 18,000 words; This is about 2,500 words.
I highly recommend reading the original in its entirety, if you have time, and I’m a big fan of the Accelerate book too. As with all the other summaries I create, this just as as way to help me digest and understand an excellent article.
Tags: accelerate, devops, fourkeymetrics, jezhumble, nicoleforsgren, stateofdevops, summary