Speaker

Dave Karow

Dave Karow

Build software faster without breaking things. Test what works (user behavior vs your opinion).

Redwood City, California, United States

As Continuous Delivery Evangelist at Split Software, Dave speaks about feature flag strategies that connect progressive feature delivery with per-session observation of system health, user experience and user behavior. Dave grew up in Silicon Valley as it evolved from chips to software and then internet services, giving him a unique perspective on the long arc of technology evolution. Before joining Split, Dave evangelized the “shift left” of performance testing at BlazeMeter, helping dev teams ship faster with greater confidence.

Area of Expertise

  • Information & Communications Technology

Topics

  • progressive delivery
  • continuous delivery
  • feature flags

A Layered Approach to Progressive Delivery: Build Your Way to Faster, Safer, Smarter Releases

Progressive Delivery is the practice of decoupling deploy from release, allowing changes to be safely pushed all the way to production and verified there *before* releasing to users. Selectively dialing up and down the exposure of code in production without a new deploy, rollback, or hotfix is the foundation of Progressive Delivery, but the higher-level benefits of safety and fast feedback come from layering practices on top of that.

Key Takeaways:
Whether you are new to Progressive Delivery or are already practicing some aspect of it, you'll learn/refresh on the basics and then come away with a powerful model for layering higher-value benefits on top of that foundation:

-> Decouple Deploy from Release
o Incremental Feature Development
o Testing In Production
o Kill Switch (big red button instead of hotfixes and rollbacks)

-> Automate Guardrails/Do No Harm Metrics
o Alert on Exception / Performance (early in rollout)
o “Limit The Blast Radius” (without manual heroics)

-> Measure Release Impact
o Boost Team Pride
o Avoid the Feature Factory Trap

-> Test To Learn (A/B Testing)
o Taking Bigger Risks Safely
o Learning Faster With Less Waste (painted door experiments, dynamic config)

How My Six-Year-Old Daughter Learned to Code, Deploy, Release and Iterate

Creating a more diverse tech workspace requires a different kind of "pipeline" -- one that creates tech curiosity and a sense of mastery in underrepresented teammates from an early age.

Commodity hardware and DevOps principles can play a role.

I'll share how $65 of pre-integrated parts, small batch sizes and limiting WIP resulted in squeals of delight from my six-year-old daughter as she learned she could code, deploy, test and iterate until the software and hardware did what she wanted it to.

The key (and not just with six-year-olds) is fast cycle time! In sprints of 5-10 minutes each, she was able to write and deploy code, test, and iterate (all without handoffs or waiting for resources).

I'll end with a QR code for you to easily clone this idea for your own home and any community you are connected with.

Deliver Results, Not Just Releases: Control & Observability in CD

How do companies like Netflix, LinkedIn, and booking.com crush it year after year? Yes, they release early and often. Look deeper and you'll find that all of these teams also build in fine-grained control and observability of the payloads passing through their CD pipelines, allowing them to ship faster, with greater safety, while focusing on observable customer impact (results), not just releases.

The lessons learned from early implementations of this approach (known as “shift right testing” or “feature experimentation”) have been published, but not widely read. This talk is a condensed summary of a decade’s worth of those lessons, followed by key takeaways that will equip you to achieve similar benefits in your own environment.

#continuous delivery #observability #experimentation #data science #devops

First presentation of this talk: DeveloperWeek Austin 2019.

This talk is zero % sales pitch. There is no mention of my company's product or customers in this talk. I'm in it for the long term, where awareness that this approach is possible will lead some folks to build their own, and some to buy from my employer. Have a look at my slides or video from GOTO Chicago for an earlier version: https://gotochgo.com/2019/sessions/951/slides https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4l0iwa0XHw

Dave Karow

Build software faster without breaking things. Test what works (user behavior vs your opinion).

Redwood City, California, United States