In finance, diversification is a strategy by which risk is minimized through spreading your securities across multiple platforms to negate the negative performance of any one platform, and on average, yield higher returns. A similar strategy can be applied in development, to minimize risk and generally improve efficiency of Enterprise Software. This strategy is referred to as Microservices or Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
“Failing to plan, is planning to fail” – Alan Lakein.
I believe that no statement holds truer when taken in the context of development. It is for this exact reason that as developers, we often dedicate entire sprints to planning and laying out required technical functionality/specifications. The technical specification is a powerful tool, its usefulness transcends merely defining scope and complexity.. I would go as far as to say, that any development requirement should be furnished with a technical specification document or breakdown, irrespective of how easy/complex it may seem. Complexity in fact, is one of the major issues that a specification document addresses; and it is through that breakdown and the creation of that technical document, that all assumptions and ambiguity are put to rest. In short, a technical specification document provides developers with clearly defined goals and direction, and ultimately allows for better management of stakeholder expectations.
RSAWEB recently partnered with Chef (previously known as Opscode) to host a DevOps meet up, held at The Griffin in Johannesburg. Due to the rapid uptake of Cloud and scalability, the once clearly defined boundaries between the Development, Sysadmin and Operation teams have become increasingly blurred. This change and growth has neatly set the stage for the DevOps culture which has rapidly gained traction amongst the development sphere in South Africa.
What is ScaleConf?
Now in its fourth year, ScaleConf is a three day annual conference centred on the Internet and the need to build websites to sustain the rigors of today’s traffic and usage. With WiFi sponsored by RSAWEB, this year’s ScaleConf took place at Kirstenbosch Gardens from 4th – 6th March and included a host of local and international speakers such as Franz Struwig from Garmin, Willem Van Biljon from Takealot and Charity Majors from Parse / Facebook, to name but a few.
Much has been said about the vast potential of RSAWEB Flex Cloud as a product, but in this article I would like to focus on how this offering or ‘Platform As A Service’ (PAAS) can be applied in the real world of development.
Unit testing can often be a cumbersome practice to introduce into any development team. Many of the converts I’ve introduced to unit testing (myself included) have all despised the practice in the beginning often saying that its takes twice the amount of time.
The art of testing is often an after thought where development is concerned making it hard for developers to get into the mind shift of having to write tests first before they code. It’s my hope that this article will give some more incentive for making the leap.
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