Remove Roadblocks And Let Your Developers Ship Faster With Self-Serve Infrastructure

Summary

The goal of every software team is to get their code into production without breaking anything. This requires establishing a repeatable process that doesn’t introduce unnecessary roadblocks and friction. In this episode Ronak Rahman discusses the challenges that development teams encounter when trying to build and maintain velocity in their work, the role that access to infrastructure plays in that process, and how to build automation and guardrails for everyone to take part in the delivery process.

Announcements

• Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python’s role in data and science.
• When you’re ready to launch your next app or want to try a project you hear about on the show, you’ll need somewhere to deploy it, so take a look at our friends over at Linode. With their managed Kubernetes platform it’s easy to get started with the next generation of deployment and scaling, powered by the battle tested Linode platform, including simple pricing, node balancers, 40Gbit networking, dedicated CPU and GPU instances, and worldwide data centers. And now you can launch a managed MySQL, Postgres, or Mongo database cluster in minutes to keep your critical data safe with automated backups and failover. Go to pythonpodcast.com/linode and get a $100 credit to try out a Kubernetes cluster of your own. And don’t forget to thank them for their continued support of this show!
• Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Ronak Rahman about how automating the path to production helps to build and maintain development velocity

Interview

• Introductions
• How did you get introduced to Python?
• Can you describe what Quali is and the story behind it?
• What are the problems that you are trying to solve for software teams?
  • How does Quali help to address those challenges?
• What are the bad habits that engineers fall into when they experience friction with getting their code into test and production environments?
  • How do those habits contribute to negative feedback loops?
• What are signs that developers and managers need to watch for that signal the need for investment in developer experience improvements on the path to production?
• Can you describe what you have built at Quali and how it is implemented?
  • How have the design and goals shifted/evolved from when you first started working on it?
• What are the positive and negative impacts that you have seen from the evolving set of options for application deployments? (e.g. K8s, containers, VMs, PaaS, FaaS, etc.)
• Can you describe how Quali fits into the workflow of software teams?
• Once a team has established patterns for deploying their software, what are some of the disruptions to their flow that they should guard against?
• What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Quali used?
• What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Quali?
• When is Quali the wrong choice?
• What do you have planned for the future of Quali?

Keep In Touch

• @OfRonak on Twitter

Picks

• Tobias
  • The Terminal List on Amazon
• Ronak
  • Midnight Gospel on Amazon

Closing Announcements

• Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to check out our other shows. The Data Engineering Podcast covers the latest on modern data management. The Machine Learning Podcast helps you go from idea to production with machine learning.
• Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.
• If you’ve learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@podcastinit.com) with your story.
• To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers

Links

• Quali
  • Torque
  • Visual Studio Plugin
• Subversion
• IaC == Infrastructure as Code
• DevOps
• Terraform
• Pulumi
  • Podcast Episode
• Cloudformation
• Flask

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA