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Accelerate: Building and Scaling High-Performing Technology Organizations [Book Review]

The book Accelerate: Building and Scaling High-Performing Technology Organizations by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim details the findings of four years of research on how DevOps affects various outcomes, such as software delivery tempo and stability, as well as the organizations' profitability and market share. DevOps in this context means things like continuous delivery, automated tests, trunk-based development, and proactive monitoring of system health. It is quite clear that DevOps practices bring lots of benefits to organizations adopting them. The research findings are also in line with my own experience of DevOps.

The findings of the research are presented in the first part of the book (a bit more than half of it).

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Episode 53: Sam Newman Turns Up the Microservices Dial

In Episode 53 of DevOps Radio, host Andre Pino is joined by industry thought leader Sam Newman. Sam is an author, speaker, and independent consultant (previously at Thoughtworks) who specializes in cloud storage and microservices. In addition to sharing more than 20 years' worth of industry insight, Sam provides analogies and examples a plenty for listeners who may still be trying to grasp what a microservice is. Sam jokes that he's been stuck in an enjoyable rut for the last 15 years, working with interesting people like Jez Humble and building the Lego XP game that helped people learn Agile (like many of us, if there's an excuse to buy a Lego, Sam's up for it).

As the author of Building Microservices and an expert on the topic, Sam says organizations need to have a good reason for using microservices. For the listener's benefit, Sam compared microservices adoption to a dial — not a switch — where you steadily continue to turn it up all the time instead of fully committing and flipping the switch right off the bat. He also reiterates that developers need to have a clear understanding of what they're trying to accomplish with microservice adoption, otherwise it can be hard to justify the time it takes to implement.