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: empathy - because understanding others is at the heart of everything you do; leadership - advice on creating shared understanding, conveying strategy, and developing your team; 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
@danielbryantuk
@SpectoLabs

2. Tl;DR
Most of the current problems we see with
implementing microservices are connected with
people and organisational systems
this is good news, as we already have existing solutions!
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

3. @danielbryantuk
• Software Developer, CTO at SpectoLabs
• Agile, architecture, CI/CD, Programmable infrastructure
• Java, Go, JS, microservices, cloud, containers
• Continuous delivery of value through effective technology and teams
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
bit.ly/2jWDSF7

4. Preamble: microservices adoption
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
Microservices are here
innovateordie.com.au/2010/05/10/the-secret-to-accelerating-diffusion-of-innovation-the-16-rule-explained/

5. Today...
Create and share Strategy/tactics
Optimise for Feedback
Define Responsibilities
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

6. 1. Strategy - situational awareness, vision & evaluation
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

7. 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
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

8. Antipattern: (micro) Silver bullets
• No well-defined goals/strategy
• but...
– microservices is the solution?
• Determine business goals, create
hypothesis, (choose tech?), and validate
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

9. 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
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

10. situational awareness
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
philcalcado.com/2015/09/08/how_we_ended_up_with_microservices.html
speakerdeck.com/acolyer/making-sense-of-it-all

11. Define goals and strategy
• Create s.m.a.r.t. goals
– With all stakeholders
• Pick your (strategic) poison
• Share the outcomes...
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

12. Communicate the vision
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

13. Tactics: Technical Leadership is vital
• Promote shared understanding
– Communication (bit.ly/1Ia3u8o)
• Risk management
• ‘Just enough’ up-front design
– Microservice boundaries and 'glue'
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

14. 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
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

15. Antipattern: technical insanity
• We created a technical mess with a monolith...
• But we believe No change is required with our
approach when implementing microservices???
• We need strong technical leadership
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

16. paypal.github.io/InnerSourceCommons/
www.oreilly.com/programming/free/getting-started-with-innersource.csp
Teams and technology: Innersource
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

17. 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/

18. Choices: Beware of Confirmation bias
27/04/2017 @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/

19. Evaluation - It'S easy to be tricked
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

20. Evaluation - beware of bias and heuristics
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

21. Antipattern: netflix* (technical) envy
• Blindly copying Tech from
*netflix/google/amazon/twitter
• Learn about the principles,
practices and culture as well
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

22. 2. Feedback - visibility and constant learning
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

23. Feedback is vital
• Business
• Architecture
• operations
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

24. Visibility for the business
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

25. Microservices should be business-driven
• Bake-in metrics and signals
within services and platform
• Allows Validation of hypotheses
• Share regularly throughout org
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPGCdziXlHU

26. Architectural feedback
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

27. ANTIPATTERN: TROJAN monoservices
• Its all too easy for the monolith
to creep back in (somewhere)...
• h/t Matthew skelton
• Continually retrospect on technical
work using supporting metrics
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
www.slideshare.net/SkeltonThatcher/teams-and-monoliths-matthew-skelton-londoncd-2016

28. 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
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

29. When bad things happen, people are always involved
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk | @oakinger

30. Mikey dickerson's Hierarchy of reliability
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
www.infoq.com/news/2015/06/too-big-to-fail

31. A little bit of standardisation goes a long way
27/04/2017 @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/

32. 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
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

33. 3. Responsibilities - the buck always stops somewhere
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

34. 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
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

35. People Pain point - How does Devops fit into this?
• Devops topologies
– http://web.devopstopologies.com/
– @matthewpskelton
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

36. Antipattern: the 'fullstack engineer' myth
“I'M sorry, but if you'RE not designing the computer chips and
writing the website, then I don'T wanna hear from you”
Charity Majors (@mipsytipsy), CraftConf 2016
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/86181845
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

37. Kudos to Gitlab for their postmortem
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

38. DevOps - Responsibilities
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

39. Devops - define responsibilities
• Focus on what matters
– Ci/CD
– Mechanical sympathy
– Logging
– Monitoring
– Nfrs / cfrs
– Change management
– Incident resolution
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

40. How much value does non-deployed code
provide to users?
0
(*Universal Unit of Value)
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
*

41. 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
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

42. In conclusion: Microservices will create change...
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

43. Change Management is Essential
• Fair process (three ‘E’s)
– Engagement
– Explanation
– Expectation
• Leading change
– Transformation is a process
– Communicate, plan, evaluate, learn, Empower
– Obtain buy-in from the top
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

44. Leading change
1. Establish sense of urgency
2. Create the guiding coalition
3. Develop a vision and strategy
4. Communicate the vision
5. Empower employees for broad-based action
6. Generate short-term wins
7. Consolidate gains and produce more change
8. Anchor new approaches in the culture
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

45. Wrapping up - Conclusion
• 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
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

46. THANKS...
@danielbryantuk
Daniel.bryant@Specto.io
http://muservicesweekly.com/
(Credit to the entire opencredo team for inspiration/guidance)
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

47. Bedtime reading
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk