Azure PowerShell

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Of course Microsoft provides PowerShell functionality for their Azure cloud. This is pretty handy for several reasons.

For dev ops engineers using PowerShell is going to be faster than doing everything through the portal. PowerShell commands or scripts can be saved and reused easily. Eventually a toolkit of scripts and commands will help built out a solid dev ops infrastructure.

I’ve made use of some of these commands on occasion and found them highly valuable. I’m capturing them in this blog post so I have a quick reference for later.

For your standard commands (creating and manipulating resources) the overview here is good:

Get Started with Azure PowerShell cmdlets

I was setting up deployment slots for automated deployments. I found this article useful for creating, deleting and swapping deployment slots:

Using PowerShell to manage Azure Web App Deployment Slots

Scrum Anti-Patterns

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Came across this over the weekend. It’s a good read. Scrum is pretty standard practice in software development these days. It’s a great tool for managing task based work cycles to track how much gets done. Combine this with an iterative approach and you can begin to see trends in overall team productivity not to mention deliver working features on a regular basis.

This article and accompanying e-book provide some insight into how to interpret burn down charts. Obviously there’s an “ideal” burn down that teams are supposed to strive towards. What we don’t often do is properly interpret these charts during retrospectives to identify problems.

Agile is meant to be an adaptive process. We should be vigilant in assessing our process in order to maintain velocity and meet expectations. Without understanding what the chart is saying it’s difficult to make the appropriate changes.

I will be reviewing this article regularly to help understand what’s happening within my own project work.

Use Burn Down Charts to Discover Scrum Anti-Patterns

Good to Great

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Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t – By Jim Collins

I read this book a year ago and wanted to do a bit of a review. This is a management/leadership book which tries to do an empirical analysis of why some companies succeed and others fail.

Jim Collins has written a few books on leadership focusing on rapid growth companies. His focus on empirical data is a good take because it does provide support for his theories. This subject is interesting to me because I find the start up space and growth driven companies exciting. One of the recurring themes within the start up industry is how to translate early initial success into healthy growth and long term success. Jim attempts to identify some reasons some companies make the leap and maintain continued success.

At 320 pages this book isn’t too long. What keeps things engaging in spite of the hard numbers is the relevant examples. Contrasting successful companies with lesser examples within the same industry really helps to drive home the theoretical points.

Gleaned from the data are seven characteristics of companies which could be recognized as common across the successful companies:

  • Level 5 Leadership – The unique qualities of the leaders of these successful organizations. Leaders who are humble, but driven to do what’s best.
  • First Who, Then What – Successful organizations focus on getting the right people first, then worrying about their direction/strategy.
  • Confront the Brutal Facts – Every organization faces adversity. Leaders must face these facts honestly and directly without losing hope.
  • Hedgehog Concept – The idea that an organization must center it’s focus in order to be successful. Collins identifies three qualities that must be met in order to achieve an effective hedgehog concept: What lights your fire (“passion”)? What could you be best at in the world (“best at”)? What makes you money (“driving resource”)?
  • Culture of Discipline – Organizations that value discipline and diligence are able to stay the course through good and bad in order to achieve success (what he calls “rising of the cottage cheese”).
  • Technology Accelerators – Organizations that identify and effectively utilize technology within their Hedgehog Concept were able to stay on top or ahead of their market.
  • The Flywheel – Collins recognizes that momentum in organizations are often a result of an additive effect of many small initiatives compounding their effect to propel growth.

My Take

Being fairly new to organizational management and leadership I found this book to be really interesting. While the focus is on large publicly traded companies that maintained growth and success over a long period of time, there were many valuable lessons for smaller organizations. For me personally this added some insight into the most important factors for maintaining continual growth from an organizational perspective.

While I did find the numbers side of things a bit dry (and I’m a math guy!) it didn’t detract from the overall message. I appreciate that Collins was attempting to maintain empirical rigor in a subject matter not conducive to objective study. I think he was able to tie his own theories about success to his evidence in a way that was convincing and believable.

One drawback I think is that the numbers and evidence were so thorough they provided me enough information to think about alternative conclusions. Perhaps there are other factors for these organizations’ success that didn’t fit within Collins’ model. The numbers could potentially be used to refute some of his claims. Being fairly new to the field, I’m not quite there yet but it’s given me things to ponder. Leaving this open ended like that makes the book stick with you longer.

The other problem with this book is it’s now somewhat dated. While the research was effective and relevant at the time the book was written, some of the “Great Companies” have now failed miserably (Circuit City and Fannie Mae in particular). This undermines Collins work a little bit but doesn’t completely invalidate his theories. Besides, 18 years a long time in the world of business. We’ve gone through several major economic upheavals within that time.

Overall I definitely would recommend this book to anyone interested in leadership, management or organizational growth. The study and data alone are worth learning about to contrast successful companies vs others within their industry. Whether you’re new to leadership or a seasoned exec this book will give you a few metaphors to remember when making decisions and conducting day to day tasks. And while this book focuses on the larger corporate space it’s definitely invaluable for small and medium sized companies. That’s where growth is often largest and most disruptive.

 

 

A Daily Impostor

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Impostor syndrome has been a common buzzword in software development for the past year or two. It’s an interesting concept and I think everyone experiences it to a certain degree.

There are two parts to the definition. One, as an individual in the workplace you don’t internalize your own accomplishments. This means a person thinks less of themselves and downplays their achievements and value in the workplace. Two, the individual feels they are an incapable fraud and this fraud will eventually be discovered. These feelings lead to a lot of anxiety and self doubt.

Software seems to be an interesting industry where the impostor syndrome is quite common. I definitely feel this way and it has impacted my career negatively. How you boost your own self confidence is somewhat subjective, and while I’ve gotten better, I feel I have a long way to go.

I recently came across an article that gave me a different perspective on a few levels. The article was more about work life balance but it made a few interesting points about how managing work life balance helped the author with his own impostor syndrome.

The issue for me is that if I don’t set these boundaries, if I allow myself to continue working and exploring and solving problems at all hours, my own Impostor Syndrome only gets worse. I want to know everything and I cannot, and because I cannot I start to think less of myself.

This is a great take on things. I feel the same way on a lot of levels, I know there are things I should be learning, tools I should be experimenting with and trends I should be following. It’s nearly impossible to keep up and knowing that can lead to feelings of inadequacy that only increase symptoms of impostor syndrome.

The second paragraph goes on to discuss social media and the developer community

Twitter and other social media are the worst things when it comes to having this problem. People who are clearly brilliant programmers, people who I admire for their work, would proudly declare that they’d just spent all day coding and were feeling really accomplished and I could only sit back and despair about why I couldn’t do that. Why can’t I put that kind of effort in? Stupid brain! Why won’t you let me be as productive as they are?! I can be just as good as they are, if only you’d get outta my way!

This was a trap I found myself falling into a year ago when I was really getting into React development. I discovered twitter was a great place for news and updates and there were all these amazing developers out there sharing their work. But comparing yourself to others is a surefire way to get serious impostor syndrome. We are all different in our own strengths and abilities so there’s no reason to for direct comparisons.

The article is about being a 9 to 5 developer but I think it has lessons for anyone working in any profession. We must balance our work and life in order to be effective in both our personal worlds and our professional worlds.

Teamwork is still all about working together

Posted on by under Lead

Found an interesting blog post about Google’s study on team performance. It seems the most important thing is that team members feel secure enough to take risks without facing humiliation.

I find this interesting because it mirrors the recent book review I did in which Lencioni suggests a lack of trust is the first dysfunction of broken teams.

I’m fortunate to work in an industry that’s quite forward thinking. The abstract nature of our work means getting results is highly dependent on individuals working together. The team dynamic is built first and foremost on trust and respect. Without that no one’s going to pull an all nighter for you, nor will they back you up when you screw up.

For me, the easiest way to build this trust is to listen. Listening to my coworkers and allowing them to have their opinions heard helps build trust. At the very least they know I’ll hear them out if they have concerns. From there it’s a lot easier to get everyone engaged and trusting each other. It’s a small step in the right direction that can go a long way for productivity and team results.

The React Component Lifecycle

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Coming from the ASP .NET background the idea of a page life cycle is pretty well known to me. I was relieved to discover that React components follow a similar model: The Component Lifecycle. Briefly, these are defined methods that are always called during the life of a component and can be overridden with custom logic.

The similarities lie in the idea that there are specific events for the creation, use and termination of a Page or Component. Because ASP .NET is a server side rendered page it has a more complicated life cycle. If you want to compare take a look at this ASP .NET Page Life Cycle Overview.

The React Component is simplified and as such can be broken down into three phases:

  • Creation and initial rendering – When a component is used it will need to be instantiated and rendered on the page. For this there are several methods which are executed in the following order:
    • constructor(): If you’re familiar with object oriented programming this is the method that instantiates your component. Useful for setting up initial state of the component and binding your call backs.
    • componentWillMount(): This is called immediately before mounting the component and rendering. This is useful because any logic in this method won’t trigger a re-render.
    • render(): This is the real heart of a component where the actual output is specified (what will show up on the screen). This method is required. Also note that the render function should not modify state directly.
    • componentDidMount(): Invoked immediately after the component is mounted. Any updates in this method will cause a re-render. This is a good location to fetch data from a remote source because the component will have rendered before the data is fetched.
  • Using and updating the component – Once the component is mounted it will be interacted with. This is where the user gets a chance to use the component. The following methods are executed in order when the component is being re-rendered:
    • componentWillReceiveProps(): This is called when the component props change (maybe being reset). This is not called during initial mounting and will only be called if some props update.
    • shouldComponentUpdate(): React’s default behavior is to re-render on any state change. This method can be used to override that if there’s cases when an update shouldn’t cause the component to re-render.
    • componentWillUpdate(): Similar to componentWillMount() this can be used for perparing before a re-render. Keep in mind that you can’t call this.setState() within this method.
    • render(): Same as above. This is what outputs the component. All updates have been captured and pushed to the screen.
    • componentDidUpdate(): Called immediately after the re-render. Similar to componentDidMount() and can be used for updating DOM elements or calling network resources.
  • Disposing the component – At the end of the lifecycle the component is removed from the DOM. Here we have one useful method:
    • componentWillUnmount(): This is called immediately before the component is unmounted and destroyed. Us this to clean up anything outstanding (network requests, DOM elements, timers etc.).

 

As you get into more complicated use cases your components will inevitably require the use of these lifecycle methods to handle complicated logic, data requirements and interactivity. Getting to know them will help in understanding React better.

Review – The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

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The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni

I recently listened to this book in audiobook format as an exercise for better understanding team dynamics. I found this to be a decent book with some useful information.

The book is written as a fable which seems to be common in management literature. I like this format. The concepts are explained as they’re applied in a story that’s believable. I was able to relate to the characters and situations which helped me understand the five dysfunctions and their impacts.

The model is based on five interrelated dysfunctions which each contribute to each other and cumulatively lead to poor performance:

  1. Absence of Trust – Fear of being vulnerable with team members prevents the building of trust within the team. For a leader, showing vulnerability to the team helps build trust and makes being vulnerable acceptable within the team. This helps members accept each others weaknesses and built trust together.
  2. Fear of Conflict – The desire to preserver artificial harmony stifles the occurrence of productive ideological conflict. Directly tied to trust, if members can’t engage in conflict in a  way they feel safe then decisions can’t be made. A leader must allow conflict to occur naturally and know when moderation is required.
  3. Lack of Commitment – The lack of clarity or buy-in prevents team members from making decisions they will stick to. If team members can’t voice their opinions for fear of conflict they won’t agree to a decision they don’t agree with. It’s important for a leader to allow everyone who shows any doubts to at least speak their mind in order to get buy in. Then once a decision is made all team members will accept the decision whether they agree with it or not. This commitment drives performance.
  4. Avoidance of Accountability – The need to avoid interpersonal discomfort prevents team members from holding one another accountable. If the team members aren’t committed they won’t feel a need to hold each other accountable. Without accountability nothing gets delivered. Normally a manager would dictate this to the team but a leader must enable each team member to hold each other accountable.
  5. Inattention to Results – The pursuit of individual goals and personal status erodes the focus on collective success. Perhaps the most difficult when each individual feels they are judged based on their individual performance. A leader must emphasize the importance of the team, as well as how each individual contributes to the team. If members buy into this and understand that their individual results should be framed in the context of team results the overall team performance can improve.

This has been quite interesting to me because organizational values can directly contribute to these dysfunctions. An organization that values individual performance is going to have a hard time getting the most out of team work. A company that doesn’t engage its employees in strategy and vision will never get full buy in and therefore employees just won’t be committed to strategic initiatives. In my industry there can be big egos and people afraid to fail. This leads to absence of trust and can be experienced from the top all the way down.

Overall I enjoyed this book. The model Lencioni has built seems to make sense to me and I agree with it for the most part. I was able to reflect on some of my own qualities and behaviors that make me a leader. There were also some good lessons that have inspired my next few subjects to explore.

Because this is a short read I’d recommend it to anyone interested in team dynamics and team management from human perspective.

Creat-React-App on Azure

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The create-react-app boilerplate is pretty good. It’s easy to get up and running in react with this package. It also provides useful tools for compiling the application into a production ready deployment.

Unfortunately this doesn’t fit perfectly into the Azure pipeline because Microsoft wants to build things on the server. The Azure platform is great and they’ve got good support for Node.js apps. But with the create-react-app in particular a few steps need to be completed in order to get this up and running properly. There’s documentation for this out there but I ran into a couple small snags along the way.

  • Obviously you want to have a create-react-app set up in a repository.  You can clone the project from this Github Repo. Read the documentation on setting it up
  • You’ll need custom deployment scripts for this app. Install azure-cli then use

    azure site deploymentscript --node --sitePath build

    where “build” is the output directory from the npm run build command

  • The deploy.cmd must be modified to properly build the app then copy it over to the actual wwwroot. This Stack Overflow Answer helped point me in the right direction

kudu

  • In my case I’m doing “npm install” then “npm run build” and finally using the kudu sync to copy the compiled app to the wwwroot folder.
  • Connect your Azure web app to your repository. Microsoft provides support for a variety of source control repos for this. It’s fairly straightforward and well documented at here
  • Properly set the node version: I had some problems where my node and npm versions were incorrect. The version can be set in the package.json file or the application settings. This blog post explains both.
  • I needed to install the create-react-app and babel packages globally to handle proper transpiling. Log into Kudu from the Azure portal and run the npm install -g commands

If all goes well doing a commit and push to remote will kick off a build on the azure web app. From there the custom script will kick in and build the app using the create-react-app build script. Finally it should copy this to the wwwroot folder leaving you with a clean website.

The nice thing with the custom script is I’ll be able to get my unit tests running in there making it all automatic. The deploy will fail if the tests fail leaving the environment untouched. I’m excited to get this working for a very simple and streamlined CI pipeline.

 

Another useful post by Jeff Wilcox describing setting up custom builds on an Azure web app

Why Leadership?

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As I’ve grown in my career and become more aware of future career paths I was always uncertain about the concept of leadership. In particular I’ve been wondering why I’m hearing leadership in place of management more and more. There are several reasons for this in my particular industry.

Leadership is a hot topic in all of business because effective leadership drives performance and results. A strong leader (at any level) can improve the performance of everyone in the team. Where leadership shines is during the difficult times in the workplace. A leader helps with difficult decisions, difficult conversations and difficult consequences.

I.T. as an industry has several qualities that make it unique. Change is constant and rapid. Many employees are well educated and highly intelligent. Most work is entirely abstract and difficult to grasp physically. On top of that there never really is a “right” solution for any problem. Decision making in this environment is difficult because of these factors and trying to get people to agree to decisions is even harder. Leadership demand is therefore emerging in I.T. where juggling the problems of technology with the human aspects of team management makes driving a team towards an effective solution challenging.

Contemporary software development practices also demand leadership. The Agile methodology and Scrum development practices advocate self organizing teams. No management positions are even listed for typical teams in these environments (Scrum Master and Product Owner being the closest). Regardless of title, leaders will emerge and must operate from a leadership role rather than a management role all while remaining equal to their peers. This is a difficult challenge. Organizations structured around Agile teams will have a different management layer that must provide guidance to these self organized teams. Here leadership is extremely important. Not only do these managers need to show leadership to numerous teams at the team level, they will often be engaged with every individual on each team. Helping to guide teams while providing individual leadership is probably not new but it seems like an interesting dynamic I haven’t been exposed to before.

Having experience in competitive sports in my youth brought out my interest in both teamwork and leadership. I’m now seeing it’s benefits in the workplace and I’d like to learn more about this in order to help myself, my colleagues, the teams I’m a part of and the employer I work for. There’s plenty of ideas and theories about leadership and I look forward to exploring this area and applying my own unique touch in my day to day life.

The Pipeline

Posted on by under Ops

Continuous integration and Continuous deployment have once again changed for the better. Thanks to automation and Git hooks people are now doing deployments triggered directly off commits. This should drastically improve and speed up the overall CI and deployment paths.

I’m looking to implement this in Microsoft Azure which provides support for this

 

Continuous Deployment to Azure App Service

 

We are currently using a three environment configuration : CI, QA and Production with a staging slot meant for blue green deployments (ref: Martin Fowler).