Nine Lives of DevOps: How cats can teach us about building resilient systems

DevOps is all about building and maintaining resilient systems that can withstand failures and quickly recover from disruptions. But did you know that cats, with their nine lives, can teach us a thing or two about resilience?

In this fun ignite, we will explore, in 5 minutes, the feline principles of DevOps and how we can apply them to our own systems. From agile development and continuous integration to disaster recovery and failure mitigation, we will see how cats can inspire us to build better, more resilient systems. By the end of this ignite, you will have a new appreciation for the feline friends in your life and a set of practical tips for improving the resilience of your own systems.

Outline:

1. Introduction to DevOps and the importance of resilience;
2. The nine lives of cats: how they can teach us about resilience;
3. Agile development: how cats adapt to change;
4. Continuous integration: how cats always land on their feet;
5. Disaster recovery: how cats always have a backup plan;
6. Failure mitigation: how cats bounce back from setbacks;
7. Collaboration and communication: how cats work together as a team;
8. Monitoring and observability: how cats always know what's happening around them;
9. Conclusion: how cats can inspire us to build better, more resilient systems.

Technical Debt - a fun (promised!) boardgame

A game that teaches you how to leverage and control technical debt!

In software development, technical debt is the cost of rework you need to do, in order to keep a system functional in the long run. It could either be the result of taking shortcuts, which pile up code that you need to come back to later; or, it could also be the result of changing requirements - for example, you have more users than you expected, and now you have performance issues.

However, even though technical debt is often seen as negative, it’s not always a bad thing: The shortcuts you take now might speed up your development, and give you a first-mover advantage.

Like with financial debt, technical debt can create leverage - but only if you balance acquiring debt with paying debt, and only if you make conscious decisions about your debt. Having both too much, and too little technical debt can slow you down!

For example, not having any technical debt probably means that you’re over engineering or doing premature optimisation, slowing down how quickly you ship new features. Similarly, too much technical debt results in stability issues, reduces your speed of delivery, and means you have a lot of code to rework later on.

This game aims to help you understand how to leverage technical debt to your benefit, so you build a successful business. You’ll also learn that too much technical debt might give you success in the short term, but makes you lose in the long term. You need to figure out how to strike a balance! :)

Arjen de Ruiter and Jomiro Eming launched the Technical Debt Game in 2021, a game that teaches you how to leverage and control technical debt! Play for yourself at: https://github.com/arjenderuiter/techdebtgame

Can run this workshop in various time lenghts, though 90 minutes is usually best so we can do a few rounds and do a mini retro in between.

YATA - A DevOps Game

A workshop to learn about DevOps principles and practices. This simulation game is designed to teach individuals and teams about DevOps in a fun and interactive way.

The game is played by dividing the group into teams (dev and ops), the teams work together to deliver a new software product, using Jenga blocks to represent the product they design / test / build.

Throughout the game, you will learn about the importance of communication, collaboration, feedback loops and continuous improvement in DevOps.

The Yata DevOps Game incorporates elements of Agile and Lean methodologies, such as kanban boards and daily stand-up meetings. It also includes challenges and obstacles that teams must overcome.

You will leave the workshop with a better understanding of DevOps principles and practices, as well as practical tips and strategies for implementing them in your organization.

Adrien Muller and Yoan Thirion developed YATA - a serious devops game. A game will demonstrate major principles behind DevOps. Play for yourself at: https://play14.org/games/yata

This workshop is suitable for both technical and non-technical individuals, and it can be customized to fit larger or smaller groups or timeslots. Expected time to run the workshop: 90 minutes.