Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge

Serverless Craic from the Serverless Edge
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Welcome to Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge with Dave Anderson, Mark McCann and Mike O'Reilly. We want to share our tools and techniques so that you can use them to communicate your Technical Strategy with your C-Suite and business owners. We want to help you to build a serverless first organisation. We will show you how to use Wardley Mapping to gain situational awareness of where your cloud applications and business are. And then how to develop your technical capability in away that builds engineering standards to set your organisation up for sustainable success.Sounds like the tools and techniques that you need - then hit the subscribe!-ABOUT- Dave, Mark and Mike are senior technical architects/leaders passionate about driving technical strategy. They have led transformation journeys, technical excellence, cloud adoption and tech strategies in many industries.Active in various technologies including ML/AI, Public Cloud (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), Engineering, Product, Cyber and UX.

  1. DEC 11

    Serverless Craic Ep78 How the BBC Built a Serverless-First Architecture at Global Scale Case Study

    Send us a text How the BBC Built a Serverless-First Architecture: In this episode of Serverless Craic, Dave, Mark, and Michael explore one of the most compelling real-world examples of serverless at scale: the BBC’s serverless-first transformation. We break down how the BBC News engineering team delivers global, highly-spiky traffic, meets strict public-service constraints, reduces incidents, and accelerates delivery—all with a pragmatic serverless-first mindset. Expect insights on production readiness, architectural constraints, continuous delivery, problem prevention at scale, and how the BBC evolved a massive digital estate by keeping things intentionally simple. ⏱️ Chapter Markers 00:00 – Intro 00:03 – Welcome to the episode 00:21 – BBC case study overview 02:11 – Complexity, scale and global distribution 03:42 – User experience, design systems, and history of BBC transformation 05:03 – Serverless-first and focusing on differentiating value 05:47 – Spiky traffic, transcoding and pragmatic trade-offs 06:42 – Constraints and why serverless works for the BBC 07:59 – Team size, reducing maintenance load, and continuous delivery 08:27 – Serverless-first, not serverless-only 09:05 – BBC traffic levels and operational performance 09:47 – Problem prevention, reliability and long-term value 10:02 – Improvements in BBC Media Player and user experience 10:06 – Evolution, complexity, and Gold’s Law 11:01 – Closing thoughts and what’s coming next 11:08 – Outro & Call to action 🔧 Resources & Mentions BBC Article – Delivering BBC Online Using Serverless https://www.bbc.co.uk/articles/clynq1gyn1ro The Serverless Edge – The Value Flywheel Effect Framework https://theserverlessedge.com/12-key-tenets-of-the-value-flywheel-effect/ Gall's Law – Complex systems evolving from simple systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gall_(author) Adrian Cockcroft – Serverless constraints and production readiness https://medium.com/@adrianco AWS Serverless Best Practices https://builder.aws.com/content/2pYmkuLReVaqZ29ew1P3Dn4iAvH/best-practices-for-serverless-technologies-in-aws Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge Check out our book The Value Flywheel Effect Follow us on X @ServerlessEdge Follow us on LinkedIn Subscribe on YouTube

    12 min

  2. DEC 5

    Serverless Craic Ep77 Mapping the Emerging Value – Chapter 19 | The Value Flywheel Effect

    Send us a text In this episode of The Serverless Craic, Dave, Mark, and Michael dive into Chapter 19: Mapping the Emerging Value from The Value Flywheel Effect. This chapter explores how leaders can use Wardley Mapping to uncover long-term strategic opportunities, align product thinking, and identify “land grab” moments that unlock future business value. The conversation covers: How mindset, purpose, and cloud strategy form organisational pipelines The three major value chains: sustainable operations, long-term goals, and land-grab opportunities How emerging capabilities, product thinking, and situational awareness combine to create competitive advantage Practical leadership behaviours and gameplay patterns from Wardley Mapping Examples from AI, cloud evolution, open source, and platform teams Why high-performing engineering organisations create the conditions for long-term innovation This is a deep dive for technology leaders who want to create adaptive, strategically aligned organisations capable of sensing and seizing new market opportunities. 📍 Chapters 00:00 – Intro 00:12 – Setting the context: Chapter 19 01:00 – Why long-term value isn’t just architecture 01:50 – The future CEO as an anchor for the map 02:25 – The three organisational pipelines 03:30 – Sustainable operations value chain 04:40 – Long-term goals and product mindset 06:33 – Psychological safety, experimentation & ambition 07:30 – Run → Grow → Transform 09:05 – Ineffective innovation & product debt 11:32 – The “land grab” and adjacent market opportunities 12:51 – Cloud, customer obsession & competitive advantage 13:57 – Revisiting the map 15:13 – Wardley Mapping gameplay patterns 16:20 – FUD and competitive games 18:01 – Open source as an accelerator 18:33 – Market enablement in the AI era 19:07 – Toxicity, constraints & real-world leadership 20:14 – Sensing engines, co-creation & alliances 21:03 – Competitive moves: talent raids & fast-followers 22:11 – Wrapping up & next steps 🔗 Resources & Links 📘 The Value Flywheel Effect Book https://itrevolution.com/the-value-flywheel-effect/ 🌍 Learn Wardley Mapping https://learnwardleymapping.com/ 🎙️ The Serverless Craic Podcast & Blog https://theserverlessedge.com/ 📚 Escape Velocity – Geoffrey Moore https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11103017-escape-velocity 🧭 Wardley Mapping Community Resources https://wardleypedia.org/ 👥 About The Serverless Craic We explore modern cloud, serverless-first engineering, Wardley Mapping, the Value Flywheel, and high-performance technology leadership — with practical insights you can apply in your organisation today. If you want resilient systems, rapid delivery, strong engineering culture, and adaptive strategy, you’re in the right place. 👍 Like, Subscribe & Join the Craic If you enjoy these episodes, hit like, subscribe, and drop us a comment. Let us know what topics you'd like us to dive into next. Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge Check out our book The Value Flywheel Effect Follow us on X @ServerlessEdge Follow us on LinkedIn Subscribe on YouTube

    23 min

  3. NOV 28

    Serverless Craic Ep76 Sustainability & Innovation in Modern Cloud: Value Flywheel Chapter 18

    Send us a text Sustainability & Innovation in Modern Cloud: In this episode of Serverless Craic, Dave, Mark, and Michael dive into Chapter 18 of The Value Flywheel Effect — Sustainability and Space for Innovation. We explore why sustainable architectures, well-designed domains, situational awareness, and the innovate–leverage–commoditise cycle are essential for modern cloud leaders navigating long-term value. From Wardley Mapping to domain-driven design, serverless sustainability to AI-driven development shifts, this chapter brings together multiple strands of modern engineering strategy. If you’re leading engineering teams, shaping cloud strategy, or building adaptive systems, this one’s packed with value. 📌 Chapters 00:00 – Intro: dark evenings & winter vibes 00:30 – Chapter 18 overview: Sustainability & Space for Innovation 01:46 – Short-term thinking vs long-term clarity of purpose 02:18 – Misusing “lean”: why not everything is a Toyota Production System candidate 03:04 – Innovate → Leverage → Commoditise cycle: using the right mode at the right time 04:48 – The “difficult second album”: letting go as contexts evolve 05:26 – Anti-patterns: commoditising too early and sunk-cost fallacies 06:43 – Domain-driven design & business domain discovery 07:56 – Understanding your customer & real problem spaces 08:38 – Observability, metrics & sensing your organisation 09:24 – Why blind operation kills innovation 10:25 – Resilience as the ability to respond to threat & opportunity 11:30 – Stability & security before layering in AI 12:02 – Adaptation: AI disrupting SDLCs 13:38 – Architecting for extensibility & flow 14:27 – Evolving systems & leveraging cloud innovations 15:05 – True agility vs theatre 15:57 – Situational awareness & proactive leadership 17:31 – Frictionless developer experience & cognitive load reduction 18:41 – Cognitive load, boundaries, and mission clarity 20:26 – Sustainability: carbon, cost, and efficient architectures 21:04 – Wasteful compute & why sustainable design matters 21:29 – Green software & the Well-Architected Framework 22:08 – Takeaways: well-architected → sustainable → resilient → innovative 22:41 – Wrap-up & subscribe 🔗 Resources Mentioned 📘 Books & Frameworks The Value Flywheel Effect – Anderson, McCann & O’Reilly Team Topologies (2nd Edition) – Skelton & Pais Frictionless – Dr Nicole Forsgren Accelerate – Forsgren, Humble & Kim Wardley Mapping – Simon Wardley 🛠 AWS & Cloud AWS Well-Architected Framework (incl. Sustainability Pillar) AWS Carbon Footprint Tool Serverless First principles & guidance (The Serverless Edge) 🧭 Techniques & Concepts Innovate → Leverage → Commoditise (ILC) Cycle Domain-Driven Design (DDD) Observability & Metrics Cognitive Load, Flow State, Developer Experience Situational Awareness & Value Chains Garden vs Factory analogy Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge Check out our book The Value Flywheel Effect Follow us on X @ServerlessEdge Follow us on LinkedIn Subscribe on YouTube

    23 min

  4. OCT 17

    Serverless Craic Ep75 How to Build a Problem Prevention Culture (AWS Well-Architected Explained)

    Send us a text How to Build a Problem Prevention Culture (AWS Well-Architected Explained) Stop firefighting — start preventing problems. In this episode of Serverless Craic, Dave Anderson, Mark McCann, and Michael O’Reilly explore how engineering teams can create a problem prevention culture using the AWS Well-Architected Framework. They unpack lessons from Chapter 17 of The Value Flywheel Effect, showing how high-performing cloud teams use SCORP reviews (Security, Cost, Operational Resilience, Performance) to operationalise engineering excellence. Learn how to: ✅ Shift from reactive to proactive problem solving ✅ Build dashboards that actually drive team learning ✅ Scale architecture reviews across hundreds of teams ✅ Foster psychological safety and positive peer pressure ✅ Future-proof your organisation for the AI-driven cloud era ⏱️ Chapters 00:00 – Intro and setup 00:40 – What is a problem prevention culture? 02:20 – Recognising unseen engineering work 04:30 – Balancing delivery and engineering excellence 05:40 – Defining “good architecture” 07:00 – The AWS Well-Architected Framework 08:40 – From theory to practice: SCORP sessions 10:30 – Scaling Well-Architected reviews 13:50 – Using dashboards for insight and improvement 15:00 – Building trust and psychological safety 17:00 – Peer learning and positive pressure 19:00 – Continuous improvement in real teams 21:00 – Measuring long-term maturity 22:30 – Looking forward to AI-driven cloud operations 25:00 – Outro and what’s next 🔗 Resources 📘 The Value Flywheel Effect → https://theserverlessedge.com/the-value-flywheel-effect 🧭 AWS Well-Architected Framework → https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/well-architected 🧩 SCORP Process & Templates → https://theserverlessedge.com/scorp-process-cycle 🎙️ Serverless Craic Podcast → https://theserverlessedge.com/podcast 💡 Follow The Serverless Edge on LinkedIn and YouTube Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge Check out our book The Value Flywheel Effect Follow us on X @ServerlessEdge Follow us on LinkedIn Subscribe on YouTube

    26 min

  5. OCT 3

    Serverless Craic Ep74 AWS Community Summit & Cloud Day 2025 | Serverless, AI & Bedrock AgentCore

    Send us a text In this episode of Serverless Craic, Dave Anderson, Mark McCann, and Michael O’Reilly share key takeaways from two major events — AWS Community Summit Manchester 2025 and AWS Cloud Day Dublin 2025. From psychological safety in engineering teams to serverless adoption patterns, event-driven architecture, and the rise of AI agents with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, the discussion highlights what’s shaping cloud-native development today. If you’re a software engineer, cloud architect, or tech leader interested in modernisation, AI in the enterprise, serverless-first strategies, and community-led learning, this episode is for you. ⏱ Chapters 00:00 – Intro & catching up 00:55 – AWS Community Summit Manchester highlights 02:10 – Psychological safety in engineering teams 05:30 – AI hype, misuses & team impact 07:10 – Women in Tech track & allyship 08:30 – Event-driven architecture & domain-driven design 10:45 – Modernisation talks & API boundaries 12:00 – The reality of AI adoption in enterprises 14:55 – Serverless adoption patterns & challenges 15:53 – AWS Cloud Day Dublin highlights 17:45 – AI agents and Amazon Bedrock AgentCore 19:14 – Challenges of agentic user experiences 20:15 – Securing and testing AI systems (OWASP LLM Top 10) 21:00 – Well-Architected Framework (SCORP) talk 21:39 – Power of community learning 22:22 – Wrap up & next episode preview 🔗 Resources & Mentions The Serverless Edge Website: https://theserverlessedge.com Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-serverless-edge/ The Serverless Edge GitHub – SCORP: https://github.com/ServerlessEdge/SCORP Amazon Bedrock & AgentCore: https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/ Event Catalogue: https://eventcatalog.dev/ Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge Check out our book The Value Flywheel Effect Follow us on X @ServerlessEdge Follow us on LinkedIn Subscribe on YouTube

    23 min

  6. SEP 26

    Serverless Craic Ep73 Liberty Mutual’s Cloud Journey to Serverless

    Send us a text In this episode Dave Anderson, Mark McCann, and Michael O’Reilly revisit their time at Liberty Mutual, exploring how one of the world’s largest insurers transformed from legacy systems and SOA to cloud-native architectures and serverless-first strategies. Discover how Wardley Mapping, empowered engineering teams, and a strong cultural foundation enabled Liberty Mutual to modernise at scale and deliver business value faster. We cover: Moving from mainframes and monoliths to microservices and serverless Building agile, product-led teams that own security, testing, and operations Using Wardley Mapping to make strategic technology bets Lessons on cloud adoption, change management, and leadership in a Fortune 100 enterprise 👉 If you’re a CTO, software architect, or engineering leader, this case study is packed with insights on modernisation and enterprise cloud transformation. ⏱️ Chapter Markers 0:00 – Introduction 0:34 – Liberty Mutual in Belfast: tackling hard problems 2:21 – Strategic mindset of a mutual insurance company 3:49 – Early SOA systems and first encounters with cloud 4:49 – Microservices before it was mainstream 6:14 – Enter serverless: below the line vs above the line 8:38 – Technology manifesto and cultural change 10:25 – Learning from world-class infrastructure engineers 13:53 – Wardley Mapping and spotting key enablers 16:08 – CDK, BDD, and shifting left 18:20 – Security, threat modelling, and shifting responsibilities 19:58 – Product thinking and “next best action” 21:31 – Working with auditors and external stakeholders 22:18 – Upskilling, conferences, and internal evangelism 24:08 – Business impact and scaling during COVID 25:39 – Change management: it takes a village 26:45 – External evangelism and organisational support 27:22 – Next episode teaser: Problem Prevention Culture 📚 Resources & Links 🌐 The Serverless Edge https://theserverlessedge.com  – Thought leadership on modern cloud 🎧 Podcast on Spotify 🎥 More episodes on YouTube 📖 The Value Flywheel Effect – by David Anderson, Mark McCann & Michael O’Reilly https://thevalueflywheeleffect.com Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge Check out our book The Value Flywheel Effect Follow us on X @ServerlessEdge Follow us on LinkedIn Subscribe on YouTube

    28 min

  7. SEP 5

    Serverless Craic Ep72 Map Your Tech Stack | Evolutionary Architecture & The Value Flywheel Effect

    Send us a text In this episode of Serverless Craic, Dave Anderson, Mark McCann, and Michael O’Reilly explore Chapter 15 of The Value Flywheel Effect — Map Your Solution. They discuss how Wardley Mapping and tech stack mapping create situational awareness, reduce friction between teams, and guide better architectural decisions. If you’re a software engineer, architect, or tech leader aiming to evolve your systems with serverless and cloud-native thinking, this conversation shows practical techniques to uncover bottlenecks, reduce technical debt, and align teams on strategic improvements. ⏱️ Chapters 00:00 – Intro: jumping from summer to winter 01:00 – Mapping your solution: why it matters 02:20 – Tech stack mapping in practice 03:50 – Situational awareness and collaboration 05:50 – Funding priorities and bottlenecks 07:20 – Cloud services, serverless options, and evolution paths 09:30 – Custom build vs buy vs adopt cloud-native 11:00 – Organisational insights from mapping 12:00 – Duplication and domain-driven design issues 13:00 – Team Topologies and independent service heuristic 14:20 – Total cost of ownership and well-architected lens 15:50 – Target architecture and business impact 16:50 – Using mapping for strategy and incentives 17:40 – Context switching and leadership effectiveness 18:10 – Takeaways: evolutionary architecture 🔗 Resources 📖 The Value Flywheel Effect Book – https://thevalueflywheeleffect.com 🎥 Wardley Mapping 101 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP9Rl26Xeag 🎧 Podcast: Wardley Mapping is a Game-Changer – https://open.spotify.com/episode/5cUQgQFBeIkOBWUe35rDRU Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge Check out our book The Value Flywheel Effect Follow us on X @ServerlessEdge Follow us on LinkedIn Subscribe on YouTube

    19 min

  8. AUG 29

    Serverless Craic Ep71 AI, DevOps & Serverless: Building Frictionless Developer Experience

    Send us a text In this episode, Dave Anderson, Mark McCann, and Michael O’Reilly dive deep into The Value Flywheel Effect (Chapter 14) — discussing frictionless developer experience, sense checking, feedback culture, AI in software engineering, DevOps, platform engineering, and marginal gain. We explore how AI and LLMs are shaping engineering practices, the importance of psychological safety, continuous improvement, and why code is always a liability. If you’re interested in serverless, DevOps, or building resilient modern software teams, this conversation is packed with insights. Chapters 00:00 – Introduction & Belfast heatwave 🌞 00:18 – Revisiting *The Value Flywheel Effect* (Chapter 14) 01:11 – Sense checking & psychological safety in teams 02:37 – Leadership, listening, and feedback loops 04:12 – RFCs, well-architected reviews & threat modelling 05:14 – Trusting AI feedback vs human feedback 07:59 – Documenting engineering standards for AI 09:33 – Human in the loop & cadence of reviews 11:42 – Traceability, accountability & marginal gains 13:56 – Scaling teams & expanding the “full stack” 14:29 – Infrastructure as code, DevOps origins & AI parallels 17:13 – Deployment pipelines & frictionless production 18:01 – Platform engineering & hardened building blocks 19:40 – Code as liability & avoiding bloat 20:20 – Well-architected standards & AI context 21:32 – Shifting security left & automated governance 22:33 – Isolation, zero trust & resilience 23:18 – Platforms as standards & consolidation 25:23 – Less code, better docs, and evolving patterns 27:06 – Avoiding command & control in engineering culture 28:22 – Empowerment, enabling environments & AI’s role 28:50 – Developer experience & future of AI in software Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge Check out our book The Value Flywheel Effect Follow us on X @ServerlessEdge Follow us on LinkedIn Subscribe on YouTube

    30 min
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About

Welcome to Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge with Dave Anderson, Mark McCann and Mike O'Reilly. We want to share our tools and techniques so that you can use them to communicate your Technical Strategy with your C-Suite and business owners. We want to help you to build a serverless first organisation. We will show you how to use Wardley Mapping to gain situational awareness of where your cloud applications and business are. And then how to develop your technical capability in away that builds engineering standards to set your organisation up for sustainable success.Sounds like the tools and techniques that you need - then hit the subscribe!-ABOUT- Dave, Mark and Mike are senior technical architects/leaders passionate about driving technical strategy. They have led transformation journeys, technical excellence, cloud adoption and tech strategies in many industries.Active in various technologies including ML/AI, Public Cloud (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), Engineering, Product, Cyber and UX.

Information

  • Creator
    Serverless Craic from the Serverless Edge
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2025
  • Episodes
    79
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge
  • Show Website
    Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge