The Challenge of Keeping Things Up-To-Date

When you build a system to solve a business problem, you hope it’s going to be a success and that means the code you’ve written will run in production for a long time. But there is a challenge in keeping your system up to date:

- making sure that the software it depends on gets patched and upgraded
- responding to changes in the software landscape that offer you new opportunities
- recovering from decisions you made that it just turned out were not the right ones, or are not the right ones any more

You have to learn how to manage change and get good at migrations. You also need to get the balance right: you want your product development teams to be building new features and new products but they can’t do that if they are spending all their time on maintenance and tech debt.

Keeping things up-to-date can become a long and tedious grind, sapping the joy for teams. Sarah will talk about how, if you invest in your ability to manage change, you can make this considerably less painful for everyone.

Transcript

1. sarahwells.dev The Challenge of Keeping Things Up-To-Date Sarah Wells
2. sarahwells.dev The Challenge of Keeping Things Up-To-Date Sarah Wells
3. sarahwells.dev No one gets excited about this
4. sarahwells.dev Getting it right *matters*
5. sarahwells.dev “Your ability to migrate can easily constrain your overall velocity” https://lethain.com/migrations/
6. sarahwells.dev Apple, 2000
7. sarahwells.dev Apple, 2024
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11. sarahwells.dev Upgrades and patching
12. sarahwells.dev Many of these upgrades are on someone else’s timetable
13. sarahwells.dev Migrations
14. sarahwells.dev Timing Foundations Execution
15. sarahwells.dev A migration story…
16. sarahwells.dev
17. sarahwells.dev “The decision has been made to stop work on the project”
18. sarahwells.dev Timing
19. sarahwells.dev The FT moved to Bracken House in May 2019
20. sarahwells.dev What else could you be doing?
21. sarahwells.dev Look at the return on investment
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24. sarahwells.dev Cost savings were an illusion
25. sarahwells.dev Be prepared to stop
26. sarahwells.dev “I’m not sad or disappointed”
27. sarahwells.dev “We learnt a lot and that will result in positive changes”
28. sarahwells.dev Foundations
29. sarahwells.dev Own your services
30. sarahwells.dev Active ownership of services
31. sarahwells.dev Orphaned services don’t get upgraded
32. sarahwells.dev Know what’s coming your way
33. sarahwells.dev https://endoflife.date
34. sarahwells.dev https://opensource.zalando.com/tech-radar/
35. sarahwells.dev https://opensource.zalando.com/tech-radar/
36. sarahwells.dev Set expectations
37. sarahwells.dev That could include “don’t patch too quickly”
38. sarahwells.dev Optimise for handling change
39. sarahwells.dev Choose managed services
40. sarahwells.dev APIs over templates
41. sarahwells.dev Execution
42. sarahwells.dev Clarity
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44. sarahwells.dev Who needs to do work?
45. sarahwells.dev What is the consequence of failing to hit the finish line?
46. sarahwells.dev Communication
47. sarahwells.dev https://jchyip.medium.com/why-aligned-autonomy-is-an-ongoing-struggle- efa62e272d5d
48. sarahwells.dev Empathy
49. sarahwells.dev Minimise dependencies on YOU
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51. sarahwells.dev Show people their progress
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53. sarahwells.dev Do the work for them
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56. sarahwells.dev Make sure you finish the migration
57. sarahwells.dev Two milestones New service available
58. sarahwells.dev Two milestones New service available Old service no longer used
59. sarahwells.dev Set an end date
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65. sarahwells.dev 🙌
66. sarahwells.dev In summary
67. sarahwells.dev Keeping things up to date can impact flow Invest in making upgrades and migrations easier Clarity, communication, empathy
68. sarahwells.dev https://sarahwells.dev