Process

Security policies, specialized knowledge, or staffing that does not undergo frequent change can all obscure a single point of failure until the eleventh hour: but they can be enormously detrimental to both security and productivity.

In the two decades since DevOps became a thing, it has grown in momentum, rising to buzzword status, because as the name implies, it's meant to bridge that gap and eliminate the contention between Dev and Ops. Of course, buzzwords tend to spread faster than understanding...

SpiderOak doesn't quite follow the "What Works" philosophy; we instead focus on "What Works NOW". The upside is that as our company grows and changes, we alter our processes to best suit our current needs. The downside is that this puts us in a state of constant evolution.

Making sure everybody knows everything they need to accomplish their job is tricky. Was Jane in the conversation with John about the design of the new feature? Was the conversation out loud? Does everybody remember the same outcome? One of the ways we handle this is by writing specifications.

You’ve just finished a big project, and everyone’s heads are swimming. You know things didn’t go perfectly, but at the end of the day you shipped on time. You’re feeling pretty good... and then your project manager schedules a post-mortem.

It’s 4:30PM on a Friday and the Sales rep says “I have a client meeting Monday – can you tell me how long it will take to implement the new feature we talked about today?” *Groan*.

In my last post I talked about planning features at a high level. This time I'll talk about how we plan for an individual sprint. The goal with sprint planning is to accurately plan what you can accomplish while working at a sustainable pace.

Whenever I see discussions of agile workflows I read developers complaining about how it doesn't work. They're constantly pushed to do more and to do it faster. I'm going to talk about some of the things we've done to make using an agile process enjoyable.

There are times where you want to be really needed at your job; at the very least, it gives you a sensation of stability that has nothing to do with whatever your environment is. This should be just a stage.