Blog
Insights on technology, business, and culture
Are you ready for microservices? Pt 2: The 6 preparedness factors
In part 1 of our microservices readiness series, we looked at how we determine if microservices is actually the right route for you. Once you’ve identified an actual need, ruled out alternative options as insufficient, and assessed your capabilities for handling such...
Acting with intention to battle unconscious bias
Almost no one will admit that they’re biased. But the truth is that we all carry biases, whether we acknowledge them or not—and this is a time when we’re being challenged to face them. Biases run deep: they’re rooted in our cultures, our societies, and our own...
Demystifying DevRel: Q&A with Developer Relations expert, Mary Thengvall
Developer Relations may sound like a made-up title to some ears and vaguely familiar to others. Or maybe you already have a whole team of Developer Relations experts working magic on your behalf. Mary Thengvall has been in Developer Relations (a.k.a. “DevRel”)...
The Selfless Engineer | Open Source Summit 2020
A software engineer with great coding skills and great communication skills is a diamond in the rough. But maybe it’s high-time you shine! Even if you’re more comfortable interacting with software than with people, you already have the tools to break out of the...
Are you ready for microservices? Pt 1: Need, alternatives, ability
As a development team, our goal is to deliver software that solves business problems. The business’s goal is to provide value to the customers as quickly as possible. “Monolith to microservices” is not a business goal. Business stakeholders don’t care about...
Anatomy of a .NET Core Serverless Application in AWS | Houston Tech Fest
.NET Core (soon to be .NET 5) is constantly evolving towards being a solid choice for building serverless, cloud-native applications. In this talk, Garo examines a non-trivial C# serverless application using Lambda, API Gateway, CloudFront, S3, RDS—and all the...
Business boundaries for microservices | Houston Tech Fest
As in life, so in software: Boundaries are critical. Without setting the correct boundaries we can get stuck maintaining a logically broken system potentially for years. You may be designing a greenfield application using a microservices architecture, with the goals...
Why IT needs to be involved early in the M&A process
Billions of dollars are spent on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) every year. 70-90% of those mergers and acquisitions fail, according to the Harvard Business Review. The top three reasons consistently cited are 1) lack of shareholder value, 2) inability to leverage...
Vertical Slice Architecture vs Clean Architecture: How slices fulfill layers’ broken promises
Nearly ten years ago, after several negative experiences with what became known as “Clean Architecture,” I started on a new project in which I threw out most of the commonly accepted “best practices” around building SOLID architecture. After all, as Chief Architect at...
Technology and Transportation: Q&A with IntelliTrans President Ken Sherman
Reliable service is table stakes at this point: People are already expecting on-time pickup, on-time delivery, good prices, and that their freight to not be damaged. So companies have to take it to the next level. If you’re easy to do business with and transparent...
Diving into Azure DevOps: Boards and Repos
Every software project or product requires a set of tasks or disciplines in order to be successful. Software consultants know, you need to plan, prioritize, and track the work that needs to be done. You need to safely store and version the source code. You also need...
Navigating roadblocks on the path to .NET 5 that MySQL throws in the way
Microsoft has been warning us of a full pivot to .NET 5 this fall, and some of us software consultants have been trying to help other development teams get ready for the changeover. Microsoft announced the retirement of .NET Framework early in 2019, in favor of...
