Microservices are where it’s at. Everything is easier to manage when it’s smaller, right? ‘Micro’ things may appear to be easier to manage, but there is always a macro context, and working with people and teams is no exception. Join this session to learn more. Microservices are where it’s at. Everything is easier to manage when it’s micro, right? Micro code bases (less than 10 LOC), micro containers (less than 10Mb), and micro teams (less than one person???). ‘Micro’ things may appear to be easier to manage, but there is always a macro context, and working with people and teams is no exception. This talk presents some of the challenges the OpenCredo team have seen when implementing microservices within a range of organisations, and we’ll suggest tricks and techniques to help you manage your ‘micro’ teams and the ‘macro’ level. Topics covered include: leadership - advice on creating shared understanding, conveying strategy, and developing your team; empathy - because understanding others is at the heart of everything you do; organisational structure - from Zappos’ holocracy to MegaOrg’s strict hierarchy, from Spotify’s squads, chapters and guilds, to BigCorp’s command and control. There is a management style for everybody; and more.

1. Microservices: The Organisational and People Impact
Daniel Bryant
Independent Technical Consultant / CTO
Big Picture Tech / SpectoLabs
@danielbryantuk

2. 1. The ”microservice” architecture is a paradigm shift
2. Many challenges relate to organisations or people
3. Strategy, feedback and shared responsibilities are vital
Three Takeaways

3. Session Title
Your Name
Your Title
Your Company
Your @TwitterHandle

4. Session Title
Your Name
Your Title
Your Company
Your @TwitterHandle

5. @danielbryantuk
• Technical Consultant, CTO at SpectoLabs
• architecture, CI/CD, Programmable infrastructure
• Java, Go, JS, microservices, cloud, containers
• Continuous delivery of value through effective technology and teams
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk
bit.ly/2jWDSF7

6. Preamble: microservices adoption
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk
Microservices are here
innovateordie.com.au/2010/05/10/the-secret-to-accelerating-diffusion-of-innovation-the-16-rule-explained/

7. Today...
Create and share Strategy/tactics
Optimise for Feedback
Define Responsibilities
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

8. 1. Strategy - situational awareness, vision & evaluation
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

9. Strategy: are Microservices A good fit?
• “our 'mode TWO' apps are Microservices”
– Middle-management latch on to Buzzword
– Lipstick on the pig
• Not understanding architecture principles
– Not building around business Functionality
– Creating Mini-monoliths (no twelve factors)
• No Well-defined DevOps / SRE / Ops
– Deployment/operational free-for-all
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

10. Antipattern: (micro) Silver bullets
• No well-defined goals/strategy
• but...
– microservices is the solution?
• Determine business goals, create
hypothesis, (choose tech?), and validate
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

11. What are our goals?
• Delivery of value to end users (customers)
• Business agility
• Safer, more rapid changes to software systems
– But Consider CI/CD, Devops, and value stream before microservices
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

12. situational awareness
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk
philcalcado.com/2015/09/08/how_we_ended_up_with_microservices.html
speakerdeck.com/acolyer/making-sense-of-it-all

13. Define goals and strategy
• Create s.m.a.r.t. goals
– With all stakeholders
• Pick your (strategic) poison
• Share the outcomes...
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

14. Communicate the vision
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

15. Tactics: Technical Leadership is vital
• Promote shared understanding
– Communication (bit.ly/1Ia3u8o)
• Risk management
• ‘Just enough’ up-front design
– Microservice boundaries and 'glue'
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

16. Tactics: Technical Leadership is vital
• Conway's law is well accepted
– Align teams with service (vice versa)
• Not so clear where 'Architects' sit
– Overarching, consulting, or Per team?
• Highly recommended to pair Product
managers with tech leads per team
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

17. Antipattern: technical insanity
• We created a technical mess with a monolith...
• But No change required with our approach to
architecture when implementing microservices???
• We need strong technical leadership
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

18. paypal.github.io/InnerSourceCommons/
www.oreilly.com/programming/free/getting-started-with-innersource.csp
Teams and technology: Innersource
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

19. Evaluating Tooling - The’Spine Model
• Effective conversations make for effective
collaboration within a team
– Kevin Trethewey & danie Roux, Agile 2015
• It's a TOOL Problem
– As a species, we have always been Tool users
and makers.
– We use _____ to get our work done
• People get stuck in a dilemma where equally
plausible options are available
– “Going up the Spine” breaks deadlock
http://spinemodel.info/explanation/introduction/

20. Choices: Beware of Confirmation bias
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk
https://thehftguy.wordpress.com/2016/11/01/docker-in-production-an-history-of-failure/ http://patrobinson.github.io/2016/11/05/docker-in-production/

21. Evaluation - It'S easy to be tricked
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22. Evaluation - beware of bias and heuristics
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

23. Antipattern: netflix* (technical) envy
• Blindly copying Tech from
*netflix/google/amazon/twitter
• Learn about the principles,
practices and culture as well
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

24. 2. Feedback - visibility and constant learning
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

25. Feedback is vital
• Business
• Architecture
• operations
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

26. Visibility for the business
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27. Microservices should be business-driven
• Bake-in metrics and signals
within services and platform
• Allows Validation of hypotheses
• Share regularly throughout org
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPGCdziXlHU

28. Architectural feedback
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

29. ANTIPATTERN: TROJAN monoservices
• Its all too easy for the monolith
to creep back in (somewhere)...
• h/t Matthew skelton
– Speaking at 14:5o today!
• Continually retrospect on technical
work using supporting metrics
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk
www.slideshare.net/SkeltonThatcher/teams-and-monoliths-matthew-skelton-londoncd-2016

30. Operational visibility
• Logging
– The 10 Commandments of Logging
– The Log: What every software
engineer should know
• Monitoring and alerting
– Rob Ewaschuk's Philosophy on
Alerting”
– Brendan Gregg's USE method
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

31. When bad things happen, people are always involved
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk | @oakinger

32. Mikey dickerson's Hierarchy of reliability
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk
www.infoq.com/news/2015/06/too-big-to-fail

33. A little bit of standardisation goes a long way
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk
• Automation is the goal
– Essential at scale with microservices
• But we have to understand problems
– Response, Postmortems & Root cause
• Checklists provide structure
www.microservices.com/talks/microservices-standardization-susan-fowler/

34. Microservices enable agility
• When done well...
• Build, measure, learn
– Build-in signals and metrics
– Create a culture of experimentation and failing fast
• If you don'T collect the data and Take action to adapt...
– there is limited benefit with microservices
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

35. 3. Responsibilities - the buck always stops somewhere
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

36. We hear this a lot...
“We’ve decided to reform our teams around squads, chapters and guilds”
• Beware of cargo-culting
– Repeat three times “We are not spotify”
• Understand the practices, principles, values etc
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

37. People Pain point - How does Devops fit into this?
• Devops topologies
– http://web.devopstopologies.com/
– @matthewpskelton
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

38. Kudos to Gitlab for their postmortem
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

39. DevOps - Responsibilities
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

40. Devops - define responsibilities
• Focus on what matters
– Ci/CD
– Mechanical sympathy
– Logging
– Monitoring
– Nfrs / cfrs
– Change management
– Incident resolution
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

41. How much value does non-deployed code
provide to users?
0
(*Universal Unit of Value)
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk
*

42. Antipattern: water-micro-fall
• Crafting perfect microservice
platforms / chassis / docs
• Building continually on undeployed
(and untested) assumptions
• Change mindset to Continuously
deliver incremental changes to
production ASAP
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

43. In conclusion: Microservices will create change...
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

44. Wrapping uP
• Strategy / Tactics
– Ensure smart goals and accompanying strategy are defined and communicated
– Technical leadership (architecture) skills are vital
– Choose Tooling to support your approach (not the other way around)
• Feedback
– Optimise for Visibility and learning (throughout the organisational stack)
• Responsibilities
– Learn from Conway, netflix and spotify et al, but do not cargo cult blindly
– Devops (done right) is a prerequisite for microservices
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

45. THANKS...
@danielbryantuk
Daniel.bryant@tai-dev.co.uk
(Credit to the entire opencredo & Specto teamS for inspiration/guidance)
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

46. Bedtime reading
24/10/2017 @danielbryantuk

47. bit.ly/addo-slack
Find me on slack, right now!