Microservices: The Benefits and Costs

'Mycenaean Bronze Scales' - a set of ancient, bronze scales. Any tech team should weigh microservices benefits against their costs before deciding whether to make the switch. Photographed by Mark Cartwright.

If you work in tech, you’ve almost definitely heard about microservices: the trendy style of software architecture where a system is split into multiple, independently-releasable services, that are modelled around business domains, and communicate via a network. Some people rave about all the amazing things they’ve achieved by using microservices’ benefits. Others rant about how much of their time it wastes and how much they hate it.

Like pretty much everything in tech, microservice architecture is a trade-off. Will it do great things for your organisation or not? That depends largely on how well set up you are to take advantage of the benefits and to absorb the costs.

Microservice Architecture is a trade-off. Whether it's going to do great things for your organisation depends on how well set up you are to take advantage of the benefits and absorb the costs. Read more: Microservices: The Benefits and Costs Click To Tweet

If you’re looking to make a decision about whether to use microservices in your team (or reverse one!), here’s a list of many of the pros and cons which you’ll want to consider.

Continue reading

Notes from YOW! 2014: Cameron Barrie on ‘Mobile at Warp Speed’

I attended YOW! Sydney 2014 and thought some people might get something useful out of my notes. These aren’t my complete reinterpretations of every slide, but just things I jotted down that I thought were interesting enough to remember or look into further.

A bright photo taken using a slow exposure in a train tunnel, giving the impression of moving at warp speed, such as in the topic of Cameron Barrie's Mobile talk.Cameron Barrie (@whalec), Managing Director and Principle Mobile Consultant at Bilue, spoke on “how to apply solid engineering practices to your mobile applications by understanding common mistakes made, and how to mitigate against the risks.” (Slides)

Mobile: Move Fast

He said it’s crucial to be able to move fast. If you’re not disrupting, you’re probably being disrupted.

You need to be honest about what moving fast means for your organisation: you can’t start with crappy code and processes and just start moving fast. Continue reading

Notes from YOW! 2014: Jez Humble on ‘The Lean Enterprise’

I attended YOW! Sydney 2014 and thought some people might get something useful out of my notes. These aren’t my complete reinterpretations of every slide, but just things I jotted down that I thought were interesting enough to remember or look into further.

A man in a suit, who probably works for an enterprise, running in a marathon and looking very agileJez Humble (@jezhumble), co-author of ‘Continuous Delivery’, spoke on The Lean Enterprise, specifically “the principles that enable rapid, software-driven innovation at scale” and how to transform organisations. (Slides)

He briefly covered the three horizons method of innovation and highlighted that you actually need to plan and be executing on all 3 at any one time. They also need separate management styles and reporting lines so that they don’t try to squash each other in departmental trade-offs or management bunfights. The two management styles are explore (discover new stuff) and exploit (capitalise on existing assets). Continue reading

Are Git and Mercurial Anti-Agile?

Drainage pipes running down the wall of a factory, branching and merging as they descend, similar to the disorganisation that branches can cause in Git and Mercurial.This is a question I’ve been asking myself for a while. It’s not a fully-thought out argument (that’s why it’s still a question), but it’s a train of thought that I think warrants some investigation. I’d love to get some opinions from people with good or bad experiences of using DVCS with Agile as to how this plays out practically.

So, here’s my train of thought…

Easy branching and merging is the killer feature of Git and Mercurial.

They improve on other centralised systems (Subversion, CVS) in many other ways, but branching and merging is the reason that’s always used to sell the switch. The question I want to raise is whether branching and merging are good tools for an agile development team, or a nuisance. Continue reading