Download to read offline
Uploaded byMatthew Boeckman
Useful flakes - The Value of Common Tools
The document discusses the value of common tools in empowering innovation and productivity in engineering and team collaboration. It emphasizes the importance of flexible and accessible tools that foster experimentation, learning, and a supportive community, while cautioning against the pitfalls of specialization and tool maintenance. The author argues for a unified toolset to enhance workflow and reduce cognitive load among team members.
Useful flakes - The Value of Common Tools
- 1. The Value ofCommon Tools Useful Flakes
- 2. Matthew Boeckman VP -Engineering Bluprint 19 years (dev)Ops leader Startup Advisor @matthewboeckman …. And amateur Flint Knapper
- 3. I like tobang rocks together
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10. Gosh, these arecrappy tools.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13. Accessible All members ofa tribe were tool makers Raw materials can be transformed in short order Easily taught without verbal or written instruction
- 14. Ubiquitous Rocks are like,everywhere Empowered exploration Enabled far-ranging hunting activity
- 15. Flexible These tools arereusable and extensible
- 16. Empower Innovation Failed strikes cancreate unexpected shapes, or open new approaches in the knappers minds. Those failures become feedback for the next iteration. We call those failures “Useful flakes”
- 17. Empower Innovation Familiarity with thistechnology complex enabled early peoples to experiment with raw materials, techniques, and methods. This is the foundation of our cognitive learning process.
- 19.
- 20. Specialization 40 engineers 5 teams 5workflow systems Jira Trello Basecamp osTicket Asana
- 21. 75 engineers 60 Microservices 12different datastores No DBA’s Specialization
- 22.
- 23.
- 24. Empower the right kindof Innovation Common tools Teams focus on product and feature innovation Teams do not focus on disparate tool implementation and maintenance
- 25. Empower the right kindof Innovation Specialized tools Product innovation suffers as attention is paid to maintaining different tooling High ops touch, heavy customization and integration Specialized tools require Toil to maintain
- 26. Tools must enablea Flow State
- 27. Flexible Multitasking is aLie Specialization requires context switching Context switching ends your flow state
- 28. Flexible Flexible tools maybe sub-optimal for specific tasks, but pay off in reduced cognitive load… and an increased flow state
- 30. We are unlikelyto colonize a planet made of effective CI/CD pipelines, resilient microservices, or scalable cloud computing. Ubiquitous
- 31. Ubiquitous Broad adoption ofa technology complex creates a community Of Novices, Journeymen, Masters, across functional silos, workflows, environments and departments Only this rich community can enable the most productivity from a given platform
- 32.
- 33.
- 34. Accessible All members ofa DevOps tribe should use a common toolset.
- 35. Accessible New practitioners Of atoolset Should be welcomed, Not stigmatized
- 36.
- 37.
- 38.