Tag Archives: scaling

Microservices: The Benefits and Costs

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'Mycenaean Bronze Scales' - a set of ancient, bronze scales. Any tech team should weigh microservices benefits against their costs before deciding whether to make the switch. Photographed by Mark Cartwright.

If you work in tech, you’ve almost definitely heard about microservices: the trendy style of software architecture where a system is split into multiple, independently-releasable services, that are modelled around business domains, and communicate via a network. Some people rave about all the amazing things they’ve achieved by using microservices’ benefits. Others rant about how much of their time it wastes and how much they hate it.

Like pretty much everything in tech, microservice architecture is a trade-off. Will it do great things for your organisation or not? That depends largely on how well set up you are to take advantage of the benefits and to absorb the costs.

Microservice Architecture is a trade-off. Whether it's going to do great things for your organisation depends on how well set up you are to take advantage of the benefits and absorb the costs. Read more: Microservices: The Benefits and Costs Share on X

If you’re looking to make a decision about whether to use microservices in your team (or reverse one!), here’s a list of many of the pros and cons which you’ll want to consider.

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What would a Microservices PaaS Design Look Like?

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Is this a Microservice PaaS?

A beekeeper looking at a frame of honeycomb from a hive. This blog looks at how a Microservices PaaS Design might be framed.Last week I wrote about PaaS and Microservices, asking, “Is a Microservices PaaS in our future?” Since then, I’ve had a number of URLs thrown at me along with the question, “Is this what you mean?”

Probably the closest in intent, based in the way they’re marketing themselves, are Giant Swarm. These guys are certainly putting themselves out there as “Simple Microservice Infrastructure”, and I think they’ve made some ground on implementing such a thing by including service discovery as part of their platform.

Does Docker == Microservices Paas Design?

However, my impression from their docs, as I explained in a comment on said previous blog, is that so far they’ve really only built a “Docker-based PaaS”, and are leaving most of the work of building a MSA, in terms of both choosing and configuring technologies, up to the developers of the system. To quote myself again: “in terms of setting me up with an architecture, it stops at ‘You’ve got Docker!'” (I didn’t realise it had service discovery when I wrote this.)

One of the Giant Swarm developers, Timo Derstappen, joined in the conversation. Continue reading →

Notes from YOW! 2014: Mary Poppendieck on ‘The (Agile) Scaling Dilemma’

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I attended YOW! Sydney 2014 and thought some people might get something useful out of my notes. These aren’t my complete reinterpretations of every slide, but just things I jotted down that I thought were interesting enough to remember or look into further.

Lots of empty seats at a stadium. Can Agile scale to this kind of crowd?Mary Poppendieck (@mpoppendieck) spoke about scaling agile teams. (Slides)

She started by saying:

“There’s a big assumption that if agile is good, scaling agile must be good.”

Which made my jaw drop. I make that assumption. It had never occurred to me. Maybe agile techniques don’t work in a larger organisation?

She talked about four constraints on scaling: system complexity, organisational mindset, multi-team communication, and the time and energy of bright creative people. Continue reading →

Notes from YOW! 2014: Jez Humble on ‘The Lean Enterprise’

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I attended YOW! Sydney 2014 and thought some people might get something useful out of my notes. These aren’t my complete reinterpretations of every slide, but just things I jotted down that I thought were interesting enough to remember or look into further.

A man in a suit, who probably works for an enterprise, running in a marathon and looking very agileJez Humble (@jezhumble), co-author of ‘Continuous Delivery’, spoke on The Lean Enterprise, specifically “the principles that enable rapid, software-driven innovation at scale” and how to transform organisations. (Slides)

He briefly covered the three horizons method of innovation and highlighted that you actually need to plan and be executing on all 3 at any one time. They also need separate management styles and reporting lines so that they don’t try to squash each other in departmental trade-offs or management bunfights. The two management styles are explore (discover new stuff) and exploit (capitalise on existing assets). Continue reading →