making agile technology choices

Making Agile Technology ChoicesFriday, October 28, 2011

Daniel Doubrovkine | Art.sy@dblockdotorg / dblock@dblock.org

BUILDING SOFTWARE

WHAT IS _____ ?

• What is the problem domain?

• What is the software going to do?

• What stories will it tell?

STACKS

this stack works this stack worked

TYPICAL STACK: LAMP

LinuxLinux

ApacheApacheMySQLMySQL

PHPPHP PythonPython

RackspaceRackspace

ZendZend DjangoDjango

AWS (S3, Cloudfront)AWS (S3, Cloudfront)

HerokuHeroku

RubyRubyRailsRails

Backbone.jsBackbone.js

MongoDBMongoDB

BAKEOFFbig company, lots of people

• Identify CandidatesASP.NET / RoR / J2EE / LAMP

• Develop Metricsscalability, complexity, cost

• Gather Datafeature matrix, metrics data

• Compare=SUM(A:Z)

• Pick a Winner=MAX(SUM(A:Z))

CORROSIONfortune 500 company, lots of politics

• Corruption

• Intimidation or Escalation

• Skilled Sales

• Artful Communication

• Group Think

• Boredom

AGILE OPTIONSalternative medicine

TRUSTWORTHY PEOPLEalternative medicine

• It worked before

• It didn’t work before

• It is interesting

• ______ uses it

DEVELOPER HAPPINESSalternative medicine

• Developers are happy with ______

• Their own choices

• Cutting edge technology

PRAGMATICalternative medicine

•Try It … Iterate … Keep It … Toss It

•Easy to Learn

•Frustration-less

•Quick to Leverage

•Vibrant Community

•Elegant Solutions

ITERATE ON CHOICESwas it a good choice?

“Good Technology Choices Help Developers Focus on the Problem Domain”, -dB.

THE ONLY CONSTANT IS CHANGEiterate

• Reset Early, Several Times

• Rational Thinking Kills Companies

• Incremental Rewrites Take Forever

• Think “Startup”

QUESTIONS

Daniel Doubrovkine (aka. dB.)

http://art.sy

@dblockdotorg

http://code.dblock.org

dblock@dblock.org