Failures – Love ‘em or lose János Tóth-Égetö / Software Consultant Softhouse Consulting

Are you scared of failures?

Who am I? János Tóth-Égetö Employers Ericsson 1999 UIQ 2006 Capgemini Ericsson) 2008 Softhouse Ericsson) 2014 Qvantel 2015 Been doing lately Continuous Integration & Devops Tech Lead in Jive Project

What I will talk about How do we learn new stuff? What role has failures? The learning process Speeding up development Level up with DevOps Fail fast – Succeed fast Discover requirements iteratively Learn how to do the right things Discover – With Lean Startup

The learning process Softhouse Consulting

The learning expert

Then we grow up…

And become afraid of failures So embarrassing..

When it happen to companies

Failure prevention gone bad "There wasn't a sense of urgency," a former Nokia executive told me. When dealing with a machine that pumped out millions of phones, a single mistake or bad call could cost the company billions of dollars. As a result, management was structured around many layers of approval bodies and meetings. "The whole structure was built to prevent mistakes.“ From CNET article Farewell Nokia - The rise and fall of a mobile pioneer

The learning process Try something new Failure Learn from failure Apply knowledge Success

The testing process Execute test cases Failure Analyze failure Refactor/Redesign Success

Good vs. Bad Failures Reproducible Clear cause Controlled environment Recoverable Intermittent Diffuse cause Uncontrolled environment Fatal

Design for good failures Test one thing per test case Improves clarity Make test cases independent Improves stability Control your environment Improves reproducibility

Good vs. Bad Failure Handling Stakeholders immediately notified Information analyzed Cause isolated Action taken to correct fault Action taken to correct similar faults Failures go unnoticed or ignored No analyze Test taken out of suite “temporarily” Unclear process Unclear responsibilities

Key take-aways Don’t be afraid of failuresDesign for good failuresControl your environmentCreate a strategy for failure handling

Fail fast – Succeed fast Softhouse Consulting

Speed up development Execute test cases - FAST Fail - FAST Analyze failure - FAST Refactor/Redesign - FAST Succeed - FAST

Use the right tools for the job Fast Flexible Easy to Automate Easy to use Expandable

Level-up with DevOps

What defines DevOps Collaboration between developers and IT operations/Quality Assurance Sharing information Cross-process responsibility Tear down fences between different parts of organization Culture Extensive use of tools for automation Shorten feedback loops Continuous Delivery Continuous Deployment Automation Measure effects of automation Base decisions on data, not opinions Measurements Shared Goals Always Shippable Informed Decisions

What is the goal of DevOps Faster Time To Market Improve deployment frequency Lower failure rate on new releases Shortened lead time for fixes Faster mean time to recovery

What is driving DevOps Use of agile development processes and methodologies Agile development Demand for an increased rate of production releases business stakeholders Business requirements Wide availability of virtualized and cloud infrastructure from internal and external providers Cloud computing

Fail & succeed fast with DevOps Deploy System Test Integration Test Unit Test CI Environment Stage Environment Production Environment Continuous Delivery Continuous Deployment AutomateMeasureFeedback

Discover – With Lean Startup Softhouse Consulting

Discover How do you know you’re building the right thing?

“If I’d asked my customers what they wanted they’d have said a faster horse.” - Henry T. Ford “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted they’d have said a faster horse.” - Henry T. Ford

“Customers don’t know what’s possible. Most have no idea about the enabling technology involved.” - Marty Cagan “Customers don’t know what’s possible. Most have no idea about the enabling technology involved.” - Marty Cagan

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” - Steve Jobs “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” - Steve Jobs

Featuritis Features used in a typical system Credit: Standish Group Study reported at XP2002 by Jim Johnson, Chairman

Lean Startup Method Eric Ries – The Lean Startup (2011) Business-hypothesis-driven experimentation Iterative product releases Applied Lean Principles Sidestep need for initial large development and need for heavy funding Reduces risk for large failures Reduce market risks Initially targeted for high-tech startups Applies to any individual/team/company that aims to launch a product or service to market Not only for startups Eric Ries - The Lean Startup : How Todays Entrepeneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Business

Lean Startup Method Principles and Practices Lean Reduce waste Increase value Agile Integrate customer feedback in product development DevOps Continuous Deployment Measure KPI’s

Lean Startup Terminology The minimum version of a product that can be used to test the business value of it Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Different versions of a product are offered to customers at the same time. Measure impact on actionable metric. Split Testing (A/B) Build a product based on an idea Measure customers' reactions and behaviors against built product Learn whether to persevere or pivot the idea Build-Measure-Learn

Examples on Split testing 173% Dustin found that “You should follow me on Twitter here” worked 173% better than his control text, “I’m on Twitter.” 100% A surprising conclusion from two separate A/B tests: putting human photos on a website increases conversion rates by as much as double. 34% CareLogger increased its conversion rate by 34% simply by changing the color of the sign- up button from green to red. Decisions should be based on data – not opinions

Key learning The company running most experiments against the lowest cost per experiment will win DevOps is your best friend when it comes to optimizing development speed Lean Startup methods can help you build the right things

Try – Fail - Succeed Challenge Try these ideas!

“Failure is success in progress.” -Albert Einstein