Practical Technology

I've long fallen prey to ' oh, I'll only just do this once - no point automating it ', and it's really been just the last few years that things have changed. Two examples, taught to me by Mr. Mike Weeks , one of the best automation engineers I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Who is on-call? We were a small team, and every week the task came up to swap the on-call person in our Slack 'help-me' group ( the goalie/support request point person was the only member in that group ).  It only took a few moments, but required you to check the Pagerduty schedule and then click around to get to the group and swap members. I was initially not advocating we deal with that toil as there were legitimate slow-burn fires on the go, but eventually we decided to spend the time.  It took a few days of effort, but once in place the automation revealed something I hadn't seen at the time - the toil had a cost.  Sure, it wasn't a lot of work, but it was addin...

The term 'information flows' has always given me trouble, so lately when I ran across some living examples of it that helped things click, if felt like the right time to write about it. Information flow-based systemic levers are strong influencers in systemic outcomes.  For some background on systemic levers, see here:  https://blog.practicaltech.ca/2020/12/what-system-levers-can-tell-you-about.html Now, intuitively it makes sense to me that 'information flows' are high on the leverage list - but I wouldn't be able to explain it to someone coherently ( up to the reader if that's still the case ).  The simplest explanation I have of clarifying 'information flows' would be 'access to information used in decision-making'.  ( note: information includes more than just numbers...but I'll try to keep things simple ) Ask yourself: do I have access to the information used in decision-making?   If you can go and look up or ask about the information, th...

Some off-the-cuff thoughts after attending a platform webinar yesterday. I've not heard a clear presentation on 'the platform engineering kool-aid' yet, so it was interesting to hear that yes, we continue to look for silver bullets.  However, there were some insights to be taken from it. Platform engineering has some concepts/principles that are useful to understand: Platform requires a certain level of organizational maturity ( you are already doing pipelines and IaC ) Both organizational and engineering vision-clarity ( our value prop is stable, our market share is growing, we understand our JTBD better than ever ) You need scale - while paradigms can be applied from day1, the dividends of platform are most obvious with, let's say, 50 engineers and up. API access to our 'platform' enables automation - i.e. design for programmatic access However, DevOps was presented as 'baby's first platform' - you do pipelines, great - now grow up and do platform ...

Intro - the builder's contribution As a follow-up to ‘ building a better lego brick ’ ( January 2021, huh… ), the last few years have offered me some noodling time on the problem of individuals swimming in the maelstrom of sociotechnical systemic forces. What can one do in the face of such systemic momentum? If everything is ultimately made up of unassailable systemic forces, what is an individual worker - the builder - to do? What’s my job, my contribution, my responsibility? Is there anything to aim for beyond the job description? When there are chronic problems that aren’t just going to go away, do we collapse in a heap and take up goat farming? While animal husbandry seems like an idyllic pursuit, most city by-laws prohibit such activities ( goats are fiends, anyways ). So if you are languishing in the doldrums of a day job, rather let’s talk about what you can do… and that is… contribute! No matter the state of the system we work in, it’s a foundational principle that ...

Let's start with a question: How do you model learning that is accompanied by 'perceived failure'? As a parent, I'm constantly trying to ingrain my kids with a love of learning. In learning, we can show thankfulness for what we have, and it's a way we can grow in perseverance and patience. Knowing that children innately copy their parents in many things, including mannerisms, how are they copying my response to failure? Do they ever see me fail? Well, internet: here, see me fail... ( if the keyboard stuff bores you, the conclusion is right at the bottom ) This learning experience has been generously sponsored by... ...my thanks and gratitude! Sponsorship details This came into being when PCBWay offered to sponsor an entire PCB + PCBA order in exchange for me writing up a review of my experience on my blog. After all was said and done, they paid for $140USD of product/shipping, I paid $45CAD import duties. While I've usually gone to JLCPCB, when someone offers yo...

In the fall of 2022 my boss asked me to take on the lead/eng manager role for the platform/infrastructure team I was a part of.  I'd just joined as an engineer, but - why not?  After all, I have been studying management concepts and theory for some time now as my job-hobby, surely I was ready to practice what the theory said would work! Well, it has been a rewarding year, but a hard year. Rewarding, because my time in the role confirmed what I had strongly suspected - the socio is in fact more important to spend time on than the technical, that management is indeed all about redesigning systems.  The year was hard, because - by all accounts - I experienced many of the difficult and uncomfortable parts of management in a very short period of time. It's difficult to share the experiences while keeping a certain level of discretion, so bullet points will have to suffice. Persevering in storytelling/making information visible does indeed yield results. Applying Cynefin, I bel...