In this episode, we're joined again by Andrew Shafer to talk about Agile Infrastructure (or "Agile Operations" as some folks call it).

• The in problems in IT that cause us to start wanting Agile Infrastructure. The high-level problem is enabling change (that works) more often: configuration drift, intentional complexity, walls of confusion everywhere, hero-driven incentives. Israel also mentions the theory that you have to change up your incentive structures often so that people don't get locked into incentive-driven thinking vs. "doing the right thing," so to speak.
• Leading us into the practices, Israel asks Andrew about including the operations folks in the Agile team, just as you do developers, QA, documentation, and so on. This gets into a discussion on "fractal teams." We then get into other practices and technologies that help with Agile Infrastructure:
• Version control - getting beyond .bak files. You need some kind of version control system. What do you put in there? All your configuration files, to start with. Perhaps your scripts next. Puppet and other tools can help do more. The tools, really, can be the same as used in development: git, subversion, CVS, and so on. In fact, Andrew says you should really use whatever development is using for consistency.
• Always ship trunk
• "Dark launches" - staging the release of features to test back-end tasks before exposing it to the user, and then finally giving the user access to the new system. This lets you test out the impact of the "background" tasks in the production system of new features without exposing it to users.
• An over-arching theme here is to reduce the fixed cost of deployment, trying to get it to zero as much as possible.
• Some other practices: test-driven infr, deploy early/deploy often, tagging everything with who/what/when, time synchronizing, and a few more.

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[audio http://media.libsyn.com/media/redmonk/agileexec002.mp3]

After having some coffee here in Austin, Israel Gat and I braved the Texas heat a little while longer to record a conversation about the recent Agile Roots conference, how Agile has spread in recent years, and some of the potentials that cloud computing plus Agile might bring.

We go over the Agile Roots conference that Israel was currently at: one of the themes, Israel says, was a sort of retrospective on the Agile Manifesto (put out in 2001). Also, as Israel points out many times, there was a good mix of people that made the "hallwaycon" enjoyable. Part of this, it seems was due to the somewhat unconference-y feel of the event: while it had a formalized agenda, there was room for less structured, unconference-style sessions and discussions.

Based on this, I then ask Israel to summarize what his and other's people take was on where Agile is today. In my words, it seems like Agile thinking has, largely, gone main-stream. In fact, as I chime in, large corporate development tool vendors like Microsoft with VisualStudio and IBM with the Rational line are bringing in and using significant Agile principals and practices.

Next, we get into the "Agile Operations" conversation folks from Reductive Labs have been having of late. Esp. when cloud computing technologies (like virtualization, automation, and SaaS-think) are brought into the operations side of the house, Agile principals seem especially well positioned to take advantage of cloud technologies. This gets us into a discussion of how cloud delivered software (SaaS, pretty much) might help free up some time and resources in the traditional software delivery process, primarily, by not having to support many different versions, but also (some what paradoxically to that) allowing bette customizations per customer.

From here, I lay out the theory that with cloud computing, there seems to be some efficiency gains that make it possible for smaller teams to develop and sell software instead of having to hook-up with larger software companies to get efficiencies of scale. While this discussion, as Israel gets to, has been happening a lot in the startup world (startups need less capital up-front to buy hardware and such, and thus, need less funding), it hasn't been reflected on much in the plain old ISV world. Israel lays out an interesting "out source (most) everything" model for software companies.

Kicking off our Agile Executive podcast series, I talk with Clarke Ching. We start out discussing two of Clarke's books Rocks Into Gold and a longer version he's working on. We then discuss the relation of Goldratt's The Goal.

I ask Clarke to talk to his point that breaking things into smaller chunks end ups costing less. He says:

• In bigger projects (vs. smaller ones), we end up building more low-priority things, thus "wasting" time
• With a focus on delivering small chunks that work we get higher quality, rather then wiring up lower quality stuff

After this, I ask Clarke how he's sorted out the boot-strapping problem of getting Agile started in organizations. He recommends:

• The Weetabix Sell - selling the benefits, not the ingredients or "process"
• Set expectations that it's going to be hard work
• find quick wins, preferably "without doing anything"

Finally, I ask Clarke to give us a report on the Agile scene across the pond, which he does nicely.