Voice of the DBA

Tag: software development

  • Metrics and Measures

    Many organizations have been trying to find better ways to build and deploy software for their customers. Whether they deal with the general public or internal customers, we know that delivering software that customers use can be a competitive advantage. That’s the goal of DevOps.

    While most developers and management want to do this, they sometimes forget what the goal is. Instead, they want to continue to work in a similar manner themselves while giving lip service to actual change. They often do this while pushing others to somehow produce more and better software inside the same system. I see this over and over inside various companies.

    To become better, many of us use metrics and measurement of data to help guide us in determining how to move forward. In the area of software, there are a number of research reports showing which metrics are indicative of organizations that do a good job of delivering value to their customers. There are four main metrics: deploy frequency, lead time, change fail percentage, and mean time to repair. These are highlighted, though there are plenty of other things to track in your software process.

    However, aiming to just improve their metrics as the primary goal isn’t going to make your software better. The goal is to deliver software that meets your customers’ needs. Quicker, better quality, more features, and all those things that customers use are what is important. These metrics are there to help guide you, not to be the targets of efforts.  There’s a good article that talks about some of the downsides of just trying to improve these metrics.

    The goal is the continuous delivery of value to customers. The way we do this is by experimenting with code, getting rapid feedback from customers, adjusting and improving the code, and repeating the process, learning from our efforts. We drive automation to make this smooth and easy while enabling us to get our software to customers at the pace that suits our situation. It sounds vague and amorphous, and it is.

    There is a bit of an art to developing a process that efficiently builds software. It depends highly on the people involved, and on two other things. First, guiding them to improve their process and skills with references to practices that have worked well. Second, giving them the freedom and support to experiment and learn from their efforts. In doing those two things, it’s important to remember that while you can measure how well things are changing, aiming to improve the measurements often doesn’t help you improve the goal: building better software.

    It’s good to measure things, but keep in mind that the measures are not the goal.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Coaching the Digital Transformation

    One of the challenges for me when working with customers is getting them to think about how to change their software process. Often they want to solve their problems, but no one wants to alter the way they work. Whether that’s the protocol for capturing code or managing servers, it seems that changing the way we work is hard for many people. They want everyone else to change. Or they want a magic tool that solves problems without them changing the way they work.

    Unfortunately, I’m not a magician.

    This is a common problem in many organizations. We want to be more efficient and effective, but actually changing our habits and culture is hard. Management should lead the charge, and they want to, but they can struggle with how to do this. Often they focus on changing technology, and not actually improving the way their company works.

    There’s an interesting article on digital transformations and whether the efforts are worth the investment.  In many companies, someone makes a good argument for a course of action or a project and then drives it. Others participate, but often a person pushes this forward, usually because they have some stake in the outcome. A bonus, a reputation, or just pride, whatever matters to them becomes the reason for continuing, even if there isn’t enough value from the effort. This can be because of an institutional culture that wants to finish projects, wants to find some success in a course of action. Whether a human or an organization, pride and inertia often keep us moving forward, often without any other support or analysis of how well things are progressing.

    Effective dashboards enable everyone to see current status and progress, and to make better course corrections, helping to move from a command-and-control model to a coach-and-communication orientation. Many organizations have adopted KPIs, dashboards, and other ways to analyze parts of the business, but this isn’t always something we do well in software development. We tend to look at metrics that management cares about, and on which we are measured, rather than metrics that might help us improve how we work.

    Part of digitally transforming a business is also transforming how technology is used. Part of that is us, as technologists, learning to be better and more effective. Whether this is in development or operations, we can often improve how we function. We need coaching, and in many orgs, that coaching has to come from within, from the people in a team asking others to do better. And to allow others to ask us to do better .

    Coaching is often teaching from a different perspective. It’s helping someone see what they don’t see themselves. This might be new knowledge, but many times it’s just reminding the individual of something they know, but aren’t doing. As we are asked to do more, be open to coaching and be willing to help coach others. Become a role model that helps transform how your organization uses technology.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • The Programming Languages We Use

    Many of you reading this probably work primarily in SQL. Even if you are a developer whose main language is something else, you write a lot of SQL. Even if you have an ORM writing the SQL that goes into production, I bet a lot of you are writing queries against a database to check that the data coming back in your application is correct.

    As for me, I mostly work in SQL, with PowerShell and Python being second and third. I tried R for a while, but I think Python does everything R can do and it’s much cleaner. I find R very cumbersome. I rarely write C# or experiment with anything else, but that’s the nature of my job. PowerShell is important, as I do a bunch of DevOps and PoSh is a good choice to work with on the command line for gluing processes together.

    There was a set of the top articles on programming languages from 2022 that I saw recently. I found it interesting to see what was popular. The top one was about Python being the most popular, but it shouldn’t be. This one feels like clickbait, and I find many of the conclusions not making an argument against python in a meaningful way.

    There are some other links on the “hotness” of various languages. I think these are clicked on as many developers are just curious about what others are doing, and what they might experiment with. While I like curiosity and experimentation, I do think that many of our important systems in organizations need to be built with mainstream technologies. Support and staffing are a challenge, and while Golang might be great, finding people to read and code in it is hard. I don’t know how to balance the growth of new tech with the safety of old tech, but I wouldn’t stray too far from the mainstream for anything important.

    I do find it interesting that COBOL makes the list. I know there are still lots of COBOL systems, and while there aren’t a ton of jobs, there are jobs and little competition. If I were 10-15 years younger, this would be tempting. Of course, I’d have to be willing to adapt to the jobs, but it is tempting. I know a few people making well into the six figures because of COBOL jobs.

    It’s nice to see SQL is one of the top 10 languages in use, according to this survey.. It was #9 in 2021 and #8 in 2022. I don’t know it grew in popularity so much as assembly declined compared to other skills. I certainly can’t see SQL going away, but it’s not as popular, clickbait-y, or exciting as other languages. Instead, it’s a core, required skill for any serious software development. Whether you use relational or NoSQL databases, likely you need some SQL skills.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Windows 11 Complaints

    I upgraded my primary laptop to Windows 11. A few people had said they liked it, I know that I needed to keep up at some point, and in the later stages of a pandemic, I thought this was the safest bet. I have a desktop I use regularly, and didn’t want anything risky there, and I have an older laptop, but it’s a 2015 era device, so I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. This was a 2019 laptop, so fairly new.

    In most cases, Windows is Windows. The task bar centers icons, and the start menu comes up in the middle, not the side. Not big changes.

    However.

    A few things I’ve noticed, which I find rather disturbing.

    Slow

    Windows 11 is slower, and often has interrupts or pauses that I didn’t have before. If I press the Windows key, the Start menu is slow to appear, and even then, loses some of the keyboard buffer. So if I type Windows+n+o+t+e, expecting notepad, I find the Start menu and “ote” or “te” in the window.

    Incredibly annoying.

    It also appears more checking online for stuff, and a poorer experience when I’ve changed networks.

    This is the most disturbing thing as it appears Microsoft has gone back to bloatware for Windows, assuming hardware gains. Windows 7 and 10 were slimmer, and felt like the OS was more hidden, understanding that it is a platform on which the software we need runs. The OS isn’t important for UI/UX most of the time.

    Get it out of the way.

    Task Manager

    Second thing is that Task Manager isn’t available from the status bar. I don’t know who thought this was ergonomically a problem, but when your Start menu doesn’t start, not being able to get Task Manager is a problem.

    In addition, I find at times the System Interrupts are using 100% of the CPU and outside of getting Task Manager up, nothing else works.

    Ugh.

    Too Much AI or MS Preference

    One of the more annoying things I’ve found is that if I look for some apps, Microsoft stuff gets in the way. For example, I will sometimes need to stat OpenLiveWriter. For some reason it sometimes disappears from my task bar where I pin it. If I try to start it, with the Windows key (pause) then type “open”, Excel is the first thing that appears. No other apps, but Excel.

    #$%##@#$#^%^

    Stop with the guessing here.

    I see similar things if I type “SQL” as the list of matching apps, SSMS + Redgate stuff, is hidden and I get the one, almost always wrong, guess.

    Overall

    I don’t see anything great about Windows 11 so far. Tbey’ve moved things, made minor additions, and likely made it easier for some users, but not for someone used to Windows that lives in the keyboard. Even finding some of the older things, like User Account names, is harder in W11.

    I wish I hadn’t upgraded. I dread the day I need to move away from Windows 10 on other machines.