Automate, Automate, AUTOMATE!

Since the advent of cloud computing, the economics of software development have fundamentally shifted. Today, for many projects of all sizes, the single biggest cost is the time it takes to create and ship new products and new features. The quicker we can ship, the more productive we can be - and automation can help you with that.

In this talk, Stuart will walk through a complete software development workflow. At each step of the way, he'll look at what can be automated, what the options are, and what the trade-offs are. There'll be a few war stories sprinkled in from nearly a quarter of a century of software development. Finally, we'll discuss your own experiences with automation, and see just how much further you want to take automation in your own organisations.

Presented at @sheffieldphp, 19th July 2018.

Transcript

1. A presentation by @stuherbert
 for @GanbaroDigital Automate, Automate, AUTOMATE! An Introduction For Developers
2. Industry veteran: architect, engineer, leader, manager, mentor F/OSS contributor since 1994 Talking and writing about PHP since 2004 Chief Software Archaeologist Building Quality @GanbaroDigital About Stuart
3. Follow me I do tweet a lot about non-tech stuff though :) @stuherbert
4. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? What automation do you use today?
5. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? Why do you use automation?
6. @GanbaroDigital https://unsplash.com/photos/cDwZ40Lj9eo Story #1: Cannot Compile
7. @GanbaroDigital Why We Automate
8. @GanbaroDigital Automation is often introduced to help with ...
9. @GanbaroDigital https://unsplash.com/photos/mqpMdf1MeRE Common Practices
10. @GanbaroDigital https://unsplash.com/photos/uYO30M0NND4 De-skill
11. @GanbaroDigital https://unsplash.com/photos/iS0Aq3QPsJ4 Boredom
12. @GanbaroDigital https://flic.kr/p/8taMDz Herding Cats
13. @GanbaroDigital I'm a great believer in working backwards from outcomes.
14. @GanbaroDigital https://unsplash.com/photos/NXt5PrOb_7U Guiding Direction
15. @GanbaroDigital In the last 5 years, I've adopted ONE guiding principle behind ALL my automation.
16. @GanbaroDigital “ Automation should assist us to iterate faster.
17. @GanbaroDigital “ Catch it early, catch it often.
18. @GanbaroDigital “ Any automation that slows us down should be removed.
19. @GanbaroDigital https://flic.kr/p/pdx99h A Scenic Tour
20. @GanbaroDigital The development workflow is often described as a pipeline.
21. @GanbaroDigital Development
22. @GanbaroDigital Development Integration
23. @GanbaroDigital Development Integration Testing
24. @GanbaroDigital Development Integration Testing Deployment
25. @GanbaroDigital It's rarely a neat pipeline in practice.
26. @GanbaroDigital Development Integration Testing Deployment
27. @GanbaroDigital Development Integration Testing Deployment
28. @GanbaroDigital Development
29. @GanbaroDigital Testing Deployment Integration Coding + many more!
30. @GanbaroDigital Deployment Integration Coding w/ Local Tests Coding Testing
31. @GanbaroDigital Integration Coding w/ Feature Tests or Manual Testing Coding Testing Deployment
32. @GanbaroDigital Deployment Daily Integration With Local Tests Coding Testing Integration
33. @GanbaroDigital Daily Integration With Feature Tests or Manual Testing Coding Testing Integration Deployment
34. @GanbaroDigital Testing Integration Coding w/ No Testing Coding Deployment
35. @GanbaroDigital The development workflow happens in many places.
36. @GanbaroDigital Development Integration Testing Deployment Desktops, laptops, 
 cloud workspaces / VDM
37. @GanbaroDigital Development Integration Testing Deployment Desktops, laptops, 
 cloud workspaces / VDM above & on CI services
38. @GanbaroDigital Development Integration Testing Deployment Desktops, laptops, 
 cloud workspaces / VDM above & on CI services same as above
39. @GanbaroDigital Development Integration Testing Deployment Desktops, laptops, 
 cloud workspaces / VDM above & on CI services same as above same as above
40. @GanbaroDigital When you introduce automation, make sure that it doesn't reduce flexibility.
41. @GanbaroDigital Always remember that you'll still need to make emergency releases too!
42. @GanbaroDigital There are no specific tools in this talk. Tools come and go.
43. @GanbaroDigital Development
44. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? What automation can we use to write code faster?
45. @GanbaroDigital 1. Code completion
46. @GanbaroDigital 2. Refactoring tools
47. @GanbaroDigital 3. Code formatting
48. @GanbaroDigital IDE Tools For Automation 1. Code completion 2. Refactoring help 3. Code formatting
49. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? What about code generation?
50. @GanbaroDigital Many frameworks will provide template / skeleton generators.
51. @GanbaroDigital Some frameworks will rewrite your code to help you upgrade.
52. @GanbaroDigital Integration
53. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? What is integration?
54. @GanbaroDigital “ Integration is how you deliver into your team's collective work.
55. @GanbaroDigital “Integration is adding your changes to everyone else's and proving you haven't broken anything.
56. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? How can automation help us deliver quicker?
57. @GanbaroDigital A CI server (or service) can automate checking a merge request.
58. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? If we have a CI server, what kinds of checks can we automate?
59. @GanbaroDigital 1. Reproducible builds
60. @GanbaroDigital 2. Unit tests pass
61. @GanbaroDigital 3. Gather code metrics
62. @GanbaroDigital 4. Static code analysis
63. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? How many of these automated tasks help us deliver quicker?
64. @GanbaroDigital Integration Automation 1. Reproducible builds 2. Unit tests pass 3. Gather code metrics 4. Static code analysis
65. @GanbaroDigital “ The more work a CI server does the more it becomes your bottleneck.
66. @GanbaroDigital “ A CI server is a shared resource. It's everyone's bottleneck.
67. @GanbaroDigital https://xkcd.com/303/
68. @GanbaroDigital “ Catch it early, catch it often.
69. @GanbaroDigital Thanks to git, we can test our integration locally every day.
70. @GanbaroDigital Thanks to Docker, we can run them all in an isolated environment locally whenever we want.
71. @GanbaroDigital We'll come back to this towards the end of the talk.
72. @GanbaroDigital If integration automation is slow on the CI server, it'll be slow on your dev machine too.
73. @GanbaroDigital Make sure each developer can run all the integration checks on their dev machine ... ... and that they do so.
74. @GanbaroDigital “ You can't fix people problems with technical solutions.
75. @GanbaroDigital https://unsplash.com/photos/ZSrgSSGJiQs Story #2 The Best Metrics
76. @GanbaroDigital Testing
77. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? What is testing?
78. @GanbaroDigital “ Testing is the act of proving that your code actually does what you think it does.
79. @GanbaroDigital In my experience, many developers mis-read their code.
80. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? How does testing help us iterate faster?
81. @GanbaroDigital “ Testing helps us reduce rework.
82. @GanbaroDigital Rework is expensive.
83. @GanbaroDigital Design Dev Test Live If errors in one phase cost x3 to fix in the next:
84. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? What testing can we automate?
85. @GanbaroDigital 1. Unit tests
86. @GanbaroDigital 2. Integration tests
87. @GanbaroDigital 3. Functional tests
88. @GanbaroDigital 4. Non-functional tests
89. @GanbaroDigital 5. Acceptance tests
90. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? Which of these help us iterate faster?
91. @GanbaroDigital Automated Testing 1. Unit tests 2. Integration tests 3. Functional tests 4. Non-functional tests 5. Acceptance tests
92. @GanbaroDigital Automated Testing 1. Unit tests 2. Integration tests 3. Functional tests 4. Non-functional tests 5. Acceptance tests
93. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? Do all the test approaches help us all the time?
94. @GanbaroDigital https://unsplash.com/photos/IClZBVw5W5A Right Tool For Each Job
95. @GanbaroDigital “ Unit tests help us develop libraries faster.
96. @GanbaroDigital “ Functional tests help us develop the app or API faster.
97. @GanbaroDigital “ Acceptance tests help us invoice faster.
98. @GanbaroDigital https://unsplash.com/photos/ZSrgSSGJiQs Story #2 The Best Metrics
99. @GanbaroDigital The testing failed to catch errors from the design phase.
100. @GanbaroDigital The Testing Fell Short 1. Over-reliance on unit tests w/ mocks 2. Manual functional testing 3. No representative environment to test within
101. @GanbaroDigital Deployment
102. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? How can automating deployment help us iterate faster?
103. @GanbaroDigital We need somewhere to run and test our code.
104. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? Can you spin up a representative environment?
105. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? Can you spin one up on your dev box?
106. @GanbaroDigital Two Layers of Deployment 1. Representative environment 2. Deploying code into that environment
107. @GanbaroDigital Don't merge them into a single activity.
108. @GanbaroDigital ?? ?? How do you automate your deployment today?
109. @GanbaroDigital 1. GitOps
110. @GanbaroDigital 2. Shell scripts
111. @GanbaroDigital 3. Orchestration tools
112. @GanbaroDigital Deployment Automation 1. GitOps 2. Shell scripts 3. Orchestration tools
113. @GanbaroDigital GitOps is normally* backed by a CI/CD box and orchestration tools. Can you use those to deploy locally too?
114. @GanbaroDigital Shell scripts are quick and dirty. They break down in a mixed O/S environment.
115. @GanbaroDigital It takes a lot of time to automate deployments using orchestration tools.
116. @GanbaroDigital “ Code rots over time. Automation is code.
117. @GanbaroDigital “ Automation doesn't transfer between paradigm changes.
118. @GanbaroDigital
119. @GanbaroDigital
120. @GanbaroDigital
121. Thank You Can We Help You? A presentation by @stuherbert
 for @GanbaroDigital