Software Defined Interviews

Just under a year later, Brian Gregory is back to tell us how changing over Express Script's approach to software is doing. As ever, it's mostly about meat-ware and Brian gives good, casual overview of management tactics to get everyone to the seemingly simple state of doing the right thing. Last episode Brian was on, #12 . In Twitter: @mrbriangregory Special Guest: Brian Gregory.

Coté doesn't like asking people to do things for him...or people in general.

Matt Curry is back! In this episode recorded at OSCON 2017, we discuss the problems with getting people to change, from staff to management, private sector and government.

Special Guest: Barton George.

We hear about the days when Charles was drilling for oil. Also, waffles: "I suffered years of floppy-waffles." We also discuss the deal with kombucha, to no effect, really. And, as always, Charles' emacs configuration tip of the week.

When you travel, people have a lot of thoughts about Texas.

Charles & Coté reboot their old podcast about regular things. Also, a rant on photo management in Apple-land and how terrible enterprise IT news it. Plus, upcoming topics.

Having worked in cloud since before cloud, JJ and I talk about what companies are using various cloud things for. We also discuss the conceptual history of cloud, and what exactly he does as a "business development" person at Chef. You might also know him from his "being an introvert at conferences" talk . Check him out in Twitter @jjasghar Special Guest: JJ Asghar.

What's up with all those cash numbers in quarterly reports, and what's the deal with "analyst expectations"? In this brief episode I talk with RedMonk's Rachel Stephens to get some quick tips on what to do with all that stuff. Find her in Twitter ( @rstephensme ) and on her RedMonk blog . See also this fine mound of cheese . Special Guest: Rachel Stephens.

We discuss all the human and process changes needed to do good things with computers. Special Guest: Bridget Kromhout.

Josh Long and I discuss “reactive programming." Special Guest: Josh Long.

Sometimes you have to live with bad code. No one will let you change it. There’s many good and bad reasons, so make sure you’re consciously making the decision instead of accidentally doing it. I discuss some reasons people would keep bad code, how management should think through it, and then some options for coping as needed. It was Joel, back in 2000, who said not to re-write code . I recorded t...

Somewhere around just 20% of people do pair programming. It seems to be an incredibly effective technique, according to people who follow it. I go over some of those reasons and micro case studies of organizations having success with pair programming. It seems like the right thing to do.

The idea of “failing fast” is popular in DevOps and agile think. That sounds like the exact opposite of what managers at large organizations would like to do. How do you get them to feel all warm and fuzzy about it? Here’s the top three tactics I’ve seen work.

"I get to see your face during this podcast," Matt says as we start talking about SpringOne Platform. Both of us were there and we recap Matt's talk on managing 10 Pivotal Cloud Foundry instances, namely, how they figured out using a Concourse pipeline to automate much of that management. We discuss "how to do the transformation" talks we liked, like the Citi talk . In addition to some other rando...

Summary I've had a theory that the hard-line philosophy of open source has softened in recent times. Rather than thinking closed source is to be avoided at all costs, I think most developer types are a lot more willing to accept closed source bits mixed in with open source bits. That is, open core has "won." I discuss this topic with my long time pal, Barton George, while at SpringOne Platform, pl...

Introducing cloud in a large enterprise can be challenging, and the technology is usually the least of your worries. Matt and I talk with Brian Gregory of Express Scripts who's been working on transforming Express Scripts to a more cloud native approach to IT and tell us some the history and some of the tactics that he and team have been working through. Subscribe: iTunes , RSS Feed Show Notes and...

Summary Matt and I talk about lessons learned from almost a year of helping transform IT at Allstate. When it comes to scaling up agile and cloud-think the real challenges are in functions other than development, like budgeting, planning, training, hiring, and how the overall IT department is organized. We discuss those topics - esp. budgeting! - and also how to set one's personal expectations abo...

Ernest Mueller has worked helped introduce DevOps in several organizations and has been talking about those stories at two companies he's worked for, National Instruments and BazaarVoice. Matt and Coté hear these stories (mostly at National Instruments) and we discuss how Ernest and others helped transform these companies to the new way. Download directly , listen above, or subscribe to the feed:...

Summary You don't hear too many stories about microservices in "normal" companies. In this episode, I talk with Nate Foreman about microservices-driven work he's been doing with a large enterprise recently. We discuss the goods and the bads of this approach and, overall, how it's working out. It's a good discussion of how all the usual "cloud native" concept actually play out in the real world. (A...

Summary What organization could be larger than the US Federal government? Not only that, the chance to transform how software is done in the government has perhaps one of the largest possible impacts of transforming any "IT department." In this episode, Matt and Coté talk with Diego Lapiduz who works in the GSA's 18F organization helping government agencies develop their software in new, more agil...

Summary In this first part of a new series, Matt Curry and I discuss many of the problems with transforming how a large company uses IT. From dealing with businesses cases, the finance department, and changing how the business thinks about using IT, there are numerous organizational change problems to chew on. This launches a new series of episodes in Lords of Computing where Matt and I will talk...

Summary After catching up about movies and OpenStack, John and I discuss how difficult it is to properly integrate acquired companies into the larger company. We also discuss what VCs are looking for to say yes now: a good team, it seems. Subscribe: iTunes , RSS Feed Show notes and Links Aloha . State of OpenStack talk. Andrew Shafer's To Whom it May Concern If A rounds are easy, what are investor...

We discuss how you (slowly) introduce new technologies into the market by looking at past tech cycles John has gone through. We also catch-up on the Craft conference and John’s travels in Europe. Show-notes and Links The Bruce Sterling Web 2.0 European Conference Circuit Craft conference Prezi Consul, Teraform, etc. Johnaform How do you install the thing, how do you fix the thing? DevOps Weekly em...

Summary It can take a long time to get "the mainstream" to use new technologies. One would assume that this would be true in supporting the government, as Robert Brook does in his day job. In this brief episode, over the din and bottle collection activities at Monkigras, I catch up with him on just that topic and how he tries to manage being a change agent for the benefit of the UK Parliament. Sub...