Announcing the new Atchison Academy! Lee is live at Predict 2023. How do you give your dev teams choices without introducing too much complexity?

Today on Modern Digital Business Weekly.

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Transcript
Lee:

This week, we're going to start with some news.

Lee:

I've just launched my latest course architecting for scale and introduction.

Lee:

This course, which is available free of charge is a video

Lee:

introduction to my O'Reilly Media book, Architecting for Scale.

Lee:

In it, I take two of the more popular topics from the book.

Lee:

That being Service Tiers is, and the Two Mistakes High modality, and

Lee:

present them in a video format complete with a lesson book and quizzes.

Lee:

This course is short and it's designed to simply introduce

Lee:

you to the type of information that you can learn from my book.

Lee:

It also is an introduction to my new training portal Atchison Academy.

Lee:

This is my first course created exclusively for this academy, but more

Lee:

courses are in the works, including a master course on modern digital business.

Lee:

You can also see all of my LinkedIn Learning courses in the academy as well.

Lee:

Check it out.

Lee:

Go to leeatchison.com/courses, or click the courses link

Lee:

from anywhere in my website.

Lee:

This link, we'll also be in the show notes.

Lee:

Given that this is all brand new.

Lee:

I'd love your feedback.

Lee:

Please send me a message, letting me know what you think of this new academy,

Lee:

and also let me know what you'd like to see in my planned premium courses.

Lee:

Next up, come and listen to me as I participate in a live panel discussion

entitled "Cloud-Native:The Long March" at:entitled "Cloud-Native:

time this coming Thursday, January 12th.

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This panel discussion is a keynote session at TechStrong Research's,

entitled "Cloud-Native:upcoming Predict:entitled "Cloud-Native:

For more information, or to join us at this virtual conference, go to the

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predict website for free registration.

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A link to their website is available in the show notes.

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And now last week's top story.

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Simplicity is at the heart of our desire to use cloud native

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application methodologies.

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Service-based applications are designed to decrease complexity

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in individual service components.

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Using cloud native infrastructures focuses and reduces our

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available infrastructure choices.

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Simplicity is core to virtually all cloud native patterns.

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The very nature of the cloud native pattern is based on simplicity.

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But one of the fundamental tenants of modern application development,

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which is driving the cloud native movement, is actively working

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against the desire for simplicity.

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You see, modern application architectures encouraged, team empowerment.

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Team empowerment brings decision-making down to the lowest

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logical part of an organization.

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Modern cloud native application methodologies enable distributed

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decision-making at the lowest levels of the organization.

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But how much choice should you give your development teams in building

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their cloud native applications?

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The answer may not be as simple as it seems.

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Deciding how much choice to give your teams is not an easy decision.

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And the one side we want to give our development teams, the freedom

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to decide how they design, develop and operate their applications.

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Empowered teams are innovative teams.

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The more choices you give your development teams, the greater they can innovate.

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This innovation can lead to many architectural and product advantages,

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including more customer centric solutions and faster responses to change.

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This typically results in shorter time to market.

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More competitive products, higher reliability and availability, and

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ultimately happier and more engaged teams.

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However choice has a negative downside.

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The characteristic that brings you innovative customer oriented solutions,

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also works against simplicity.

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And increased choice means increased variations in decisions that are made

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with your cloud native applications.

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More variations, increase the overall application complexity.

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Put quite simply the more choices you give your team.

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The more variations they use.

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The more variations they use, the more complex your overall application becomes.

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You see, choice becomes complexity.

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At the cost of simplicity.

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How can we enable our teams without hurting our applications

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long-term maintainability?

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Well, take a look at my article "Choice vs.

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Complexity in Cloud-Native Applications" published last week in Container Journal.