Latest from Brendan
A Prescription to End the Myopia of Software Metrics
“People don’t want a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!,” Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business Review. As someone who has purchased many drills in my life—and drilled my share of holes—this quote has always struck me as a bit, well, myopic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing with the sentiment behind the quote—that organizations […]
Apr 27, 2020 · 3 minAll articles by Brendan Hayes
Showing 1–5Is It Time to End the Software Metric Madness?
We have all heard the phrase “What gets measured, gets managed,” often attributed to Peter Drucker—interesting note about this quote, Drucker didn’t say it. In the DevOps space, or application development and delivery generally, this quote is often used as a justification to measure things like deployment velocity, bug fixes, lead time and so on, […]
DevOps, Continuous Delivery – It’s All About Automation
I spent a large portion of my career in the networking industry, marketing routers, switches and other gear that makes the internet work. Networking—like many industries—is currently undergoing a revolution that is in large part driven by software. Functions that used to be delivered as a standalone device can now run in software (not unlike […]
In the Application Economy, Every Company is a Software Company
Recently, I was in New York to attend the Third Annual DevOps Virtual Summit. (Yes, I had to be at a “virtual” summit in person—while it’s virtual for the attendees, it occurs in real life for the speakers, panelists and support staff.) The broadcast took place in a small recording studio that featured a lobby […]
When Technology Doesn’t Matter
Over 10 years ago, Nick Carr wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review with the title, “IT Doesn’t Matter.” As you might expect, an article with a title like that generated a significant amount of controversy. CEOs from leading technology companies and other writers at the time panned Carr’s premise in a way that, […]