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Welcome to Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge with Dave Anderson, Mark McCann and Mike O'Reilly. We want to share our tools and techniques so that you can use them to communicate your Technical Strategy with your C-Suite and business owners. We want to help you to build a serverless first organisation. We will show you how to use Wardley Mapping to gain situational awareness of where your cloud applications and business are. And then how to develop your technical capability in away th ...
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In this episode of Serverless Craic, Map the Market and A Cloud Guru Case Study, we dive into Chapters 7 and 8 of the book The Value Flywheel Effect. The discussion focuses on "Mapping the Market" and a fascinating case study on clarity of purpose, featuring the story of A Cloud Guru. Discover how mapping the value chain helps companies identify th…
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Welcome to the latest episode of Serverless Craic! 🎙️ Today, we're diving back into our series on The Value Flywheel Effect, focusing on Chapter 6: "Obsess Over Time to Value." Join us as we explore the significance of delivering value quickly and efficiently in tech organisations. We discuss the concept of "Time to Value" over "Time to Market," re…
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This episode centres on Chapter Five of the book "The Value Flywheel Effect," focusing on the North Star framework. We explain how this framework helps teams align their work with a clear, meaningful metric (North Star) and its related leading and lagging metrics. North Star Framework Overview We explain the North Star framework, emphasising its us…
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In this insightful discussion, we explore mapping techniques from Chapter 3 of our book The Value Flywheel Effect and their applications in organisations. Key topics include: Anatomy of a Worldly Map: Breaking down the components of a map, including visible, aware, and invisible items in the value chain. Mapping Teams and Tech Stacks: How mapping h…
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Wardley mapping is a strategic tool to visualise the evolution of products or services. The two axes of a Wardley Map are visibility and evolutionary stage. Products and technologies evolve through four stages: Genesis, Custom build, Product or rental, and Commodity or utility. Understanding context and phase of adoption is crucial in the business …
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We discuss facilitating effective collaborative mapping workshops and creating Wardley maps for strategic planning in businesses. We look at the importance of creating a safe environment, effective facilitation techniques, and involving all stakeholders in the mapping process. We also highlight the benefits of embracing diversity and respecting dif…
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Dave, Michael, and Mark discussed the application of Wardley Mapping in understanding movement and making strategic decisions. They share their experiences with the method, emphasising its ability to visualise and track changes in tech stacks and capabilities. They also discussed the importance of context, user needs, and facilitating meaningful co…
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The Value Flywheel Effect is a pattern seen in organisations where business strategy and technology strategy align, leading to more sales and growth. The hosts discuss the concept of the value flywheel effect, its origins, and how it applies to creating software for customers. Dave Anderson and Mark McCann discuss the four phases of the value flywh…
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We discuss why we wrote 'The Value Flywheel Effect,' emphasising our desire to give back to the community and help others who have contributed to their success. We share our experiences and insights on navigating the cloud transformation journey, highlighting the importance of luck, collaboration, and upskilling in overcoming challenges. We also di…
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AWS Serverless Developer Advocate Team news is breaking. We discuss this and the importance of community events and fostering a culture of curiosity and collaboration in the tech industry. We emphasise the value of attending events like ServerlessDays Belfast and looking outside one's own silo to drive enterprise transformation. We also discuss the…
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We use the Cynefin Framework in our cloud modernisation work. Dave Snowden created the Cynefin framework. Cynefin, pronounced "ku-nev-in," is a Welsh word that translates as "place" or "habitat." However, it can also be used to describe the elements of our situation and personal history that influence our thoughts and decisions in ways we don't und…
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ServerlessDays Belfast 2024. ServerlessDays Belfast is back at Titanic Hotel Belfast on Thursday 23rd May 2024 Our theme is 'Building Beyond Boundaries: ServerlessDays Belfast celebrates the spirit of Innovation'. Find out why you should come to the birthplace of Titanic and what you can expect from this year's ServerlessDays Belfast. From the 100-…
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The Software Development Lifecycle - how does it apply to modern cloud? We are kicking off this episode with the term modern SDLC. The software development lifecycle (SDLC) is changing. When you get into this new way of working, you start differently. It's no longer a straight waterfall/ABCD, or starting with an established system like SCRUM and it…
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We talk about what we would like to see announced at this years AWS re:Invent 2023 looking at Observability, Generative AI, PartyRock, Developer Experience to name a few. Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge Check out our book The Value Flywheel Effect Follow us on X @ServerlessEdge Follow us on LinkedIn Subscribe on YouTube…
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Team Engineering with SCORP - there are practices we do like SCORP, which is our agile way of doing well-architected in every sprint with teams. Our practices are connected to engineering excellence, looking at what you're doing and constantly improving. And HP (high performing engineering), as a way of capturing key metrics to define good engineer…
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There were a few stories in the news about working remotely from another country. We talk about the pros and cons of working remotely versus returning to work. We work remotely and are globally distributed, but we've worked for many years in the office to, so we have experience of both to make a fair analysis. Serverless Craic from The Serverless E…
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Developer Productivity and discussions on developers and productivity have never gone away. You heard people talking about this in the 80s and the idea of paying developers by lines of code. And it was even rubbished in the 80s as a foolish thing to do. There's a famous story about developers removing bad code from the code base and having negative…
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How important is Resilience Hub, Chaos Testing and Well-Architected? We attended the AWS Resilience Day at the Titanic Hotel. We were sitting in the same room where the ill-fated Titanic was designed and drawn! We discuss what we learned. Including the tools and strategies that help software engineers build resilience that were not available for th…
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Bringing mapping to your org. We are doing a wee series on Wardley Mapping, with some practical items. The last two episodes were: 'Wardley Mapping 101' and 'Can Wardley Maps Predict the Future?'. So I thought it would be good to answer a common question: 'That's a cool technique, but how would I do that in my work?'. If you follow Simon Wardley, o…
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Can Wardley Maps predict the future, is our topic this week. In our last episode, we talked about Wardley Mapping. We did a 101 last time, explaining the basics. One of the things that we say is that Wardley Mapping is a superpower that helps you predict the future. What do we mean by that? It's like a fortune teller. But it doesn't tell you when e…
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Wardley Mapping is a core part of our book: 'The Value Flywheel Effect'. And it's a topic that people always ask about it. It's a difficult thing to learn. We've spent many years thinking about it, stumbling around, and then practicing. So we figured we would do a quick series on Wardley Mapping. We have spent almost 10 years mapping, give or take.…
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ServerlessDays Belfast was on the 28th of February. It's a volunteer, community, and not-for-profit event. We had a bunch of sponsors: AWS, Bazaarvoice, EverQuote, G-P, Instil and LibertyIT. Our organizers are me, Gillian Armstrong, Garth Gilmour, Peter Farrell, Julie Sherlock, and Treasa Anderson. We had 12 speakers, and over 260 attendees from ov…
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We've been talking about AWS re:Invent over the last few episodes. But one thing that we haven't talked about is Serverless Espresso. Serverless Espresso is a pop up coffee shop that allows you to order coffee from your phone. In the Expo Hall at the AWS Summit, they have a Barista setup. And you walk up to a QR code with a screen in the background…
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AWS, What's New? We are post AWS re:Invent. To sum up, it was about the next generation of cloud focused on delivering value quickly by removing barriers to business adoption and enablement. On Day 1 SiliconAngle published an article called "AWS chief Adam Selipsky hints at the next-gen cloud". He looks at classic cloud versus next-gen cloud. Class…
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AWS reInvent announcements In this episode we are talking about what we would like to see at AWS re:Invent. What would you like to see? Serverless Services An increase to the enhancement and evolution of service development capabilities and the ecosystem in general. So more serverless services coming online for items that aren't serverless and iter…
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It began with the forging of the Great Maps and Simon Wardley We've been talking this week about Wardley mapping. Where did you first hear about Wardley Mapping? I first heard Simon Wardley talking at cloud conferences about early cloud. I remember an open source conference and a 20 minute video. When he presented it came across as common sense. Li…
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What is Engineering Excellence? Few companies say they don't want good engineering. But they don't define what good looks like. And secondly,engineers are expected to write lots of code. For me, engineering excellence is not writing loads of code. It's about getting into code reliability, feedback loops and how well engineering is functioning. And …
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We are just back from The Value Flywheel Effect book launch at DevOps Enterprise Summit organised by IT Revolution with Gene Kim and crew. Learning Sprint The first thing I did was a learning sprint. I did an hour on creating a cloud strategy with Wardley mapping, which I thought was interesting. I used Ben Mosior's Wardley map canvas from LearnWar…
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Today we are talking about a big DevOps Conference. And the first book signing of our new book, The Value Flywheel Effect. It's at the DevOps Enterprise Summit on October 18-20 with IT Revolution who also published our book. It's the first live event in three years. DevOps Enterprise Summit is the leading community for driving change in technology.…
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This week we look at 'What is Value Engineering?' with BMK Lakshminarayanan from DevOps New Zealand. BMK is based out of Wellington, New Zealand working as Transformation Architect and Independent Consultant for Section Six. He also worked for 15 years with Bank of New Zealand. As part of that work he connected and became a central part of the DevO…
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Grady Booch is a fantastic software architect who has done a lot of pioneering software engineering. One of his latest messages says that it's a good thing that AWS, Azure and Google are offering guidance on building with well architected. But he also warns that when cloud providers talk to you about well architected, it comes with a bias towards t…
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What is the Second Cloud Transformation? In this episode we are talking about the second cloud transformation. A lot of people are talking about what happens when you get to the cloud? You have already moved to the cloud. But you are not achieving the cloud successes like being event driven or serverless. It can be a surprise for organisations that…
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We are talking about Event Driven Architecture examples today. There was an event in London a few weeks ago, called EDA Day. It was organised by GOTO with a lot of AWS contributors. It was neat because it was one day focused on event driven architectures. It showed the coming together of a 15 to 20 year old pattern of EDA, plus serverless. And all …
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AWS Serverless Services with Paul Swail from Serverless First In this episode the team talk about AWS Serverless Services with Paul Swail. Paul is an independent Serverless Consultant helping teams get started with serverless on AWS. The Value Flywheel Effect Book Review Paul also reviewed our book The Value Flywheel Effect. The team talk about his…
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What is Long Term Value? We've spent the last couple of episodes talking about the value flywheel effect and the value flywheel itself. There are four phases: Clarity of Purpose, Challenge, Next Best Action and Long Term Value. We've been talking through each of these phases in detail. And today, we're going to talk about phase four, which is Long …
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We've been going through the Value Flywheel Effect in the last few episodes. And talking about the different phases. The Value Flywheel is the core mechanism we talk about in our book. There are four phases. The first is Clarity of Purpose, then we have Challenge, Next Best Action and Long Term Value. Today we're talking about Next Best Action. Whe…
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It's important that engineers challenge tech strategy. Challenge is about the environment. When you decide on a strategy, do you have the right environment to challenge it? In the last episode, we talked about Phase 1 of The Value Flywheel Effect: Clarity of Purpose and setting direction. The Value Flywheel Effect is our book which is available for…
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We are looking at how to apply flywheel strategy from our book 'The Value Flywheel Effect, which will be published on 29 November. In the last episode we spoke about the whole model and the four phases. They are Clarity of Purpose, Challenge and Landscape, Next Best Action and Long Term Value. This time we figured we'd deep dive into Clarity of Pur…
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Our book 'The Value Flywheel Effect' is being published by IT Revolution Press on 29 November. We thought it might be worth having a chat about what the the value flywheel is. Things really start to work well, when you join the business and technology strategy. We came up with this model to describe how you do that in a company. There are four phas…
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Clarity of Purpose with the North Star Framework For many teams, trying to figure out why you're building what you're building is a good question to ask. I have found out in my career that most teams don't really understand why they're building what they are building. It's interesting to look at the models for creating great software, like The Brit…
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Today, we decided we'd have a chat about the 8 principles or tenets for a high performance serverless first team. 1. 'Chase a business outcome or a KPI' A team should know what business KPI they're working towards. You should be able to tap a person on the shoulder and have them tell you what they're working on. And what business impact the work th…
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We found out that 'how to start cloud computing' is a burning issue from our meetup BelfAWSt. And it is a community Meetup in Belfast, to talk about all things AWS! How do you set up your account? And how do you learn? Or build your career? Who do you reach out to? And when you are more familiar with the basics, what can you leverage to build highe…
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We have picked out our top books that have influenced us and our 'The Flywheel Effect' book. 1. 'Continuous Delivery' came out in 2011. And it has been massively influential in how high performing teams deliver their software today. It is still as fresh as it was when it was written. 2. 'Domain Driven Design' describes good domain models and the im…
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This is the sixth and final piece of our Modern Cloud series. Modern Cloud has to represent value for the different personas across the business. The customer is an obvious one. But it's good to talk about internal stakeholders. The CEO and Product personas are very interesting. I think we were happy talking about the Developer and CTO/Architect pe…
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We are continuing our series on the modern cloud. During our six part series, we've covered an ‘’Introduction to Modern Cloud’, and talked about the CEO, Product and Developer perspectives. Today, we're talking about the technical leader or CTO perspective, which is linked to long term value. As CTO, you need to be on top of this because you own th…
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We're continuing our conversation on Modern Cloud. There are a couple of previous episodes: an overview of the CEO's perspective and an overview of Product's perspective. I figured we would look at the Developer perspective today. Sometimes when you meet with developers, you don't know what's working or not. By mapping out the tech stack, it's easy…
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Welcome to our conversation on Digital Product Leaders and the Modern Cloud. First of all, the good news is that our book has been announced: The Flywheel Effect. Let's just get that in there first! But let's continue our discussion on the modern cloud. We've talked about what the modern cloud is from the perspective of the CEO. What about from the…
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We're continuing our series on Modern Cloud looking at the Modern CEO. What does a CEO expect from Modern Cloud? They want capability from your engineering or IT organisation. They also want speed. And flexibility. I don't think they care about Lambdas or Kubernetes! It's good way to really frustrate your CEO if you tell him all about Kubernetes an…
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Many people are asking: 'What does modern cloud, modern application or modern architecture actually mean?' It's hard to explain what it means without thinking about legacy cloud. Gregor Hohpe has a great description. He says; 'If you lift and shift to AWS (or any of the cloud providers), and don't modernise your architecture, all you've got is a fa…
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Over the last six episodes, we have gone over the well architected framework from AWS. As a recap, we think this is a fantastic framework. It's about your workloads. Like a physical building, if the foundation is not solid, it may cause structural problems that undermine the integrity and function of the building. So you need to look at all six pil…
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