To remain competitive in today’s software-driven economy, organizations of all sizes are investing in DevOps to become better at releasing software. Although the ROI is evident in the IT and business performance of organizations that have successfully implemented DevOps practices, the journey still can be challenging.
There are troves of resources available to help companies begin or continuously improve along their DevOps journey. However, oftentimes it’s the practitioners—experts from the community who live and breathe DevOps every single day—who can offer the most insightful tips.
To that end, Electric Cloud hosts a community video podcast series titled, “Continuous Discussions” (#c9d9, for short). Each episode focuses on a different topic and brings together a group of expert panelists to discuss all things DevOps, Agile and continuous delivery (CD).
Why? Because we all understand DevOps is a team sport. It’s all about collaboration: bringing people together and continuously improving through shared learning and experimentation. Community is at the core of any DevOps initiative, and connecting with peers and sharing experiences is the best way to accelerate our mutual success—so we can all get better at delivering software, together.
These casual #c9d9 chats are often funny, entertaining, thought-provoking and—always—educational! These are a great way for the IT community to pinpoint emerging patterns, discuss challenges and highlight tips and best practices for modern software delivery, in topics including continuous improvement (CI), deployment patterns, security, DevOps culture, microservices, containers and more.
Out of the 50 episodes that have aired to date, featuring more than 150 guest speakers, below are 10 of our favorite recent discussions:
- Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) Podcast: Episode 34 – Microservices and Continuous Delivery
“In the microservices world, individual features might end up being their own services that are completely well understood”
– Daniel Rolnick, Yodle
Microservices are all the rage right now, and the industry is still learning, experimenting and developing patterns, for successfully designing, deploying and managing microservices in the real world. Are you considering jumping on the microservices wagon? Learn from experts at Kik, Yodle and Semaphore, as they share their journey and learnings from decomposing their monolithic application into microservices.
Featured Panelists:
Daniel Rolnick
Daniel is the CTO of Yodle, a SaaS platform for small businesses, where continuous delivery is a way of life.
@YodleTech | www.yodletechblog.com
Darko Fabijan
Darko is co-founder of Semaphore CI, helping teams deliver software faster. He currently is focusing on scaling Semaphore team and architecture.
@darkofabijan | semaphoreci.com/blog/
Usman Ismail
Usman is a server and infrastructure engineer, with experience in building large-scale distributed services on top of various cloud platforms.
@usman_ismail | techtraits.com
- Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) Podcast: Episode 46 – Deployment Automation 2.0
“When you treat configuration like first-class citizens, only then can you have your deployment product succeed because your product depends on the deployment configuration being right.”
– Juni Mukherjee, author of “Continuous Delivery Pipeline – Where Does It Choke?”
To enable fast, reliable releases, deployment automation is a must. This episode discusses the prerequisites and best practices for automating your deployments and ensuring zero downtime and fast mean time to recovery (MTTR) when deploying large-scale mission-critical apps. We also talked about the key differences between the first-generation of deployment automation and deployment automation 2.0, and riffed on what we have to look forward to for the next iteration of deployment automation 3.0.
Featured Panelists:
Juni Mukherjee
Author of “Continuous Delivery Pipeline – Where Does It Choke?”
@JuniTweets | techbeacon.com/contributors/juni-mukherjee
Martin Cron
Technologist, writer, photographer, teacher, evangelist, diplomat, heretic
@martincron | martin.cron.com/
Robert Firek
Software craftsman at Codurance. Devops engineer. Java programmer. Agile practitioner. He strives to create software according to the rule, “Simplicity is the final achievement.”
@robertfirek | codurance.com/blog/author/robert-firek/
Paul Reed
Paul Reed has over 15 years’ experience in the trenches as a build/release engineer, working with such companies as VMware, Mozilla, Symantec, and Salesforce. He speaks internationally on release engineering, DevOps, operational complexity and human factors.
@jpaulreed| jpaulreed.com
Taco Bakker
Taco previously worked as a Team Lead for a large international bank, spending most of his time bridging Dev and Ops. Today he’s a LEAN Six Sigma black belt focusing on CD.
@tsbakker65 | www.tsbakker.nl/taco.html
- Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) Podcast: Episode 43 – DevOps and CD for Non-Web Applications
“Firmware is updatable and I think the whole notion of being responsive to change is ultimately a very powerful characteristic of firmware and one that ultimately, along with the performance you get from it, is going to be an important part of solutions as we go forward.”
– Stephen Hendrick, ESG
If you think that DevOps is only for web apps, think again! Some of the largest organizations in the world focused on hardware manufacturing, embedded systems and IoT are proving the value of DevOps for the delivery of complex physical products that are integrated with software components. Watch the podcast to explore the differences between continuous delivery for webware and firmware, and listen to panelists discuss the challenges and patterns for successfully implementing DevOps for non-web apps.
Featured Panelists:
J. Paul Reed
J. Paul Reed has over 15 years’ experience in the trenches as a build/release engineer, working with such companies as VMware, Mozilla, Symantec, and Salesforce. He speaks internationally on release engineering, DevOps, operational complexity, and human factors.
@jpaulreed | jpaulreed.com
Juni Mukherjee
Author of “Continuous Delivery Pipeline – Where Does It Choke?”
@JuniTweets | techbeacon.com/contributors/juni-mukherjee
Mark Dalton
Enabling Enterprise Software for Continuous Everything.
@mdalton323 |autodeploy.net/category/blog/
Stephen Hendrick
ESG Industry Analyst covering application development and deployment software.
@sdh_esg | www.esg-global.com/stephen-hendrick
- Continuous Discussions (#c9d9): Episodes 29 and 45 – Security & Compliance as Part of Your DevOps Processes
“In order for you to audit and trust the system, you need to make sure the system hasn’t changed over a period of time. Have a test that shows whatever you put in, the results that come out are predictable.”
– James DeLuccia, PwC
Listen to expert panelists explain how to bake-in security and compliance to your DevOps processes. Find out how DevOps and automation can help you pass your next audit. Key focus points include what it takes to get everyone on board with DevOps; how automation equals auditing, with some discussion on industry-specific regulations and compliance requirements; and how to enforce security for the code and for your environments and configuration.
Featured Panelists:
James DeLuccia IV
Technologist, author, security evangelist, risk manager, entrepreneur and runner. James is the author of, “IT Compliance and Controls: Best Practices for Implementation” and “How Not To Be Hacked: The Definitive Guide for Regular People”
@JDeLuccia | pcidss.wordpress.com
Jonathan McAllister
Jonathan has been creating automation software since he was a child. Professionally he leverages 10+ years of experience in software development, test and delivery practices. He is an author, automator and business consultant.
@jmcallister80 | www.masteringjenkins.com/
Nikhil Vaze
Staff software engineer at Electric Cloud. He is a full stack engineer and loves to hack on things. Nikhil holds a Master of Science in Security Informatics.
@therealnikhil | http://electric-cloud.com/blog/author/nvaze/
“The safest environment is the one you don’t let humans muck around in.”
– Martin Cron, WiserCare
Featured Panelists:
Andreas Wittig
Cloud Specialist. Author of “Amazon Web Services in Action.” Software engineer, speaker, teacher and consultant.
@andreaswittig | cloudonaut.io
Dave Bechberger
Senior architect and developer with a passion for delivering solutions to challenging problems in difficult domains from concept to delivery.
@bechbd | experoinc.com/author/dave.bechberger/
J. Paul Reed
J. Paul Reed has over 15 years’ experience in the trenches as a build/release engineer, working with such companies as VMware, Mozilla, Symantec and Salesforce. He speaks internationally on release engineering, DevOps, operational complexity and human factors.
@jpaulreed | jpaulreed.com
Martin Cron
Technologist, writer, photographer, teacher, evangelist, diplomat, heretic
@martincron | martin.cron.com/
Sukhbir Dhillon
When Sukhbir isn’t coding, dreaming of automation or being the founder of Addteq, he is at home playing with his 2-year-old daughter.
@addteqsukhbir | nebula.addteq.com/blog
- Continuous Discussions (#c9d9): Episode 21 – Implementing a DevOps Culture
“One expectation I like to lead the conversation with is, if you are a non-trivial software business, then guess what? You are in competition with every other software business in the world. So, you have two choices: evolve or die.”
– Aaron Lee, Pythian
This podcast offers tips, best practices and real-world examples of how organizations can navigate the cultural shift to Agile, DevOps and continuous delivery—from the leadership’s perspective, as well as at the teams’ level. Hear expert advice on how to facilitate silo-busting and system-level thinking and how to encourage experimentation, support a blameless culture, constantly practice for game day and more.
Featured Panelists:
Aaron Lee
VP of Transformation Services at Pythian. DevOps practitioner committed to creating successful business outcomes for clients.
@observator | www.pythian.com/blog
Alon Becker
DevOps architect at AOL. Alon is involved in DevOps transformation at several companies, both startups and enterprises.
@alonbecker
Mike Kavis
VP/principaI architect @ CloudTP Analyst at Forbes and The Virtualization Practice. Author of, “Architecting the Cloud.” No hype, just lessons learned.
@madgreek65 | www.cloudtp.com/insights
Randy Bias
Randy Bias, VP Technology, EMC former founder of Cloudscaling (acquired by EMC) and director at the OpenStack Foundation.
@randybias
Robert Kalweit
Certified ScrumMaster with 7 years’ experience and an Agile mindset that helps to execute tasks efficiently, on time and with personal heartiness.
www.kalle-online.net/blog/agile
- Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) Podcast: Episode 41 – Creating an Internal Dev/Test Cloud
“While there are multiple approaches for implementing an internal Dev/Test cloud, you need to make sure that you pick a solution that is adaptive.”
– Kelly Looney, Skytap
The need to speed up feedback loops, simplify dev/test processes and collaboration and also save on infrastructure costs has led many organizations to create a private Dev/Test cloud to standardize their processes, tooling and environments across teams. This podcast takes a deeper dive into some of the challenges and prerequisites for enabling a self-service shared platform for the software delivery pipeline across dev and test, and some tips and best practices for getting started.
Featured Panelists:
Chris Riley
Helping bringing #DevOps to the enterprise. Analyst @fixateio
@HoardingInfo | devops.com/author/chrisriley/
Himanshu Chhetri
CTO @ Addteq, specializing in DevOps & Atlassian Tools implementation.
@0xhimanshu | nebula.addteq.com/blog
Kelly Looney
Regional consulting manager at Skytap.
@krlooney | www.skytap.com/blog/
Phil Dougherty
Phil has over 10 years of experience building the backbone of the internet, from multi-continent private cloud environments to fully automated public cloud infrastructure powering mobile commerce APIs.
@phildougherty | blog.containership.io
- Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) Podcast: Episode 36 – ITIL and DevOps
“Take a user-centered design approach to everything you do.”
– Jeff Sussna, DevOps writer and speaker
During this discussion, we uncovered the similarities and differences between ITIL and DevOps, and discussed tips for how to align the two methodologies in an organization.
Featured Panelists:
Jan-Joost Bouwman
Jan-Joost works at ING as ITSM process owner, adapting ITIL to an Agile Way of Work. Previously he worked in various roles in systems development.
@JanJoostBouwman
Jeff Sussna
Consultant | Writer | Speaker. Design Thinking + DevOps. Author of “Designing Delivery: Rethinking IT In the Digital Service Economy.”
@jeffsussna | medium.com/@jeffsussna
Kaimar Karu
Head of ITSM at AXELOS – custodians of ITIL & PRINCE2 / President at #itSMFEstonia / Service Management enthusiast / Beer sommelier / Food writer
@kaimarkaru | www.axelos.com/news/blogs/
Simon Morris
Interested in the mechanics and techniques of highly performing teams, whether in the world of technology or not.
@simo_morris | community.servicenow.com/people/SimonMorris
- Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) Podcast: Episode 33 – Measuring DevOps
“The way we build software when it’s always releasable is fundamentally different than when we build to a release. The flexibility and agility comes from building it iteratively—where you’re always able to go in and change it. That, I think, is the main advantage of CI and CD.”
– David Bernstein, To Be Agile
Panelists review some of the metrics that matter for the different stakeholders throughout the software delivery pipeline. Learn best practices for some of the metrics that you should be monitoring to track your DevOps efforts, and—equally important—some of the metrics you should abandon.
Featured Panelists:
Chris Riley
Helping Bring #DevOps to the enterprise. Analyst @fixateio
@HoardingInfo | devops.com/author/chrisriley/
David Scott Bernstein
David helps teams adopt practices such as test-first development and refactoring at hundreds of companies around the world. David is also the author of, “Beyond Legacy Code.”
@ToBeAgile | tobeagile.com/blog/
Ketil Jensen
Ketil is a passionate learner and practitioner, always looking for better ways to work. Loves to help organizations continually improve.
@ketilj | ketiljensen.wordpress.com
- Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) Podcast: Episode 32 – Orchestrating Your Testing Suite
“If you can test it underneath the UI, you probably really should be testing it under the UI”
– Chris Kent, BTI360
Get an in-depth review of best practices for orchestrating enterprise software testing. Panelists discuss some of the challenges and proven patterns used to test critical software quickly and efficiently: What does your test matrix look like? How do you define the pathway through your test cycle? How do you use automation and service virtualization? How do you manage test environments and data? And more.
Featured Panelists:
Alex Cowan
Alex has been an entrepreneur (5x) and intrapreneur (1x). Currently helping create digital innovators @DardenMBA & advising companies. He talks too much.
@cowanSF | alexandercowan.com/blog/
Chris Kent
Chris loves crafting enterprise apps with ATDD, TDD and clean coding. You’ll also find him reading, outdoors or at a local brewery/winery.
@thirstydev | www.bti360.com/author/chris-k/
Hugo Hendriks
Hugo is a freelance integration consultant based in the Netherlands with the focus on Oracle Fusion Middleware, Java, open source and Scrum.
@R3DR0CK | www.redrock-it.nl
Kate Abrosimova
Director of content at Yalantis and tech journalist, who likes to create things, write about technology with a focus on mobile and collaborate with tech teams.
@kateabrosimova | yalantis.com/blog/
- Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) Podcast: Episode 27 – Architecting for Continuous Delivery
“The pipeline is not so much about ushering code out to production, it’s finding ever opportunity to reject a harmful change prior to letting it get into production. So, the pipeline is an essential part of risk management.”
– Michael Nygard
To get to CD, applications and delivery pipelines must be architected in a way that supports the more frequent pace of smaller, incremental releases. On this episode, we discussed some recommendations for constructing a flexible, versionable, reviewable, test-able, revertable and resilient application architecture and CD pipeline.
Featured Panelists:
Aater Suleman CEO of Flux7, helping companies use AWS infrastructure to improve business agility and continuity. Flux7 deploys web apps across various technology stacks.
@FutureChips | blog.flux7.com
Graham Smith
Dr. Graham Smith is head of software engineering at the UK Hydrographic Office, championing continuous delivery by day and blogging about it at night.
@GrahamDSmith | pleasereleaseme.net
Marcus Rehm
Software engineer and business intelligence developer for Odebrecht Ambiental. Agile and Automation enthusiastic that always is looking for ways to improve products and process.
@marcusrehm | marcusrehm.github.io
Melvin Laguren
QA automation lead at Wrap Media. Melvin has worked at various start up and enterprise companies developing automated tests and working on CI/CD pipelines. He spends his “free” time speaking at meetups/conferences, teaching QA workshops and working on a weekly comic strip, www.melvinisms.com.
@mlaguren | www.laguren.net
Michael Nygard
Michael works for Cognitect. Has written and co-authored several books, including, “97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know,” and “Release It!”
@mtnygard | blog.cognitect.com/
With such great conversations, it’s certainly hard to choose…
Some of our other favorite episodes include our live broadcast from Mobile Delivery Days, DevOps KPIs with Gene Kim, Docker & Containers, CI & CD for legacy applications, Agile in large enterprises, and more.
Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) airs every other Tuesday at 10 a.m. PST. You can watch all previous episodes of the podcast and also subscribe on iTunes here.
About the Author / Anders Wallgren
Anders Wallgren is Chief Technology Officer of Electric Cloud. Anders brings more than 25 years of in-depth experience designing and building commercial software. Prior to joining Electric Cloud, Anders held executive positions at Aceva, Archistra, and Impresse. Anders also held management positions at Macromedia (MACR), Common Ground Software and Verity (VRTY), where he played critical technical leadership roles in delivering award winning technologies such as Macromedia’s Director 7 and various Shockwave products.