Re:The Configuration Complexity Clock (2012)
by hinkley on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @02:36PM
(#20395169)
Back pressure is an important concept in distributed computing. It's also an important concept in project management.
By and large, "We need changes faster than our release cycle" is a condemnation of your release cycle, your definition of "need", or both.
I've 'forced' a fast, low-stress build pipeline on several teams and nobody wants to go back to before. And much to management's surprise, people will defend it after I'm gone (I think they see it as me being control freak bossy, rather than personal trainer bossy).
They also participate in pushing back to a degree on these "emergencies" because we have a "fast enough" that is reliable enough that half the team is willing to be responsible for pushing the buttons. No, you can't have that before lunch. You can have it tomorrow morning, like we always do. Maybe you should think things through a bit more in the future?
My current project was so big and Balkanized that I haven't found enough cracks to operate this way. So things are better, but feel worse in some ways because it's gone from nonspecific pain to specific pain. This is going to be the first time in 15 years I haven't left a team with a good CI/CD pipeline.
But at least all the things you can change in between releases will be under version control.
By and large, "We need changes faster than our release cycle" is a condemnation of your release cycle, your definition of "need", or both.
I've 'forced' a fast, low-stress build pipeline on several teams and nobody wants to go back to before. And much to management's surprise, people will defend it after I'm gone (I think they see it as me being control freak bossy, rather than personal trainer bossy).
They also participate in pushing back to a degree on these "emergencies" because we have a "fast enough" that is reliable enough that half the team is willing to be responsible for pushing the buttons. No, you can't have that before lunch. You can have it tomorrow morning, like we always do. Maybe you should think things through a bit more in the future?
My current project was so big and Balkanized that I haven't found enough cracks to operate this way. So things are better, but feel worse in some ways because it's gone from nonspecific pain to specific pain. This is going to be the first time in 15 years I haven't left a team with a good CI/CD pipeline.
But at least all the things you can change in between releases will be under version control.