Automation Automation Automation

A good rule of thumb to have as a developer is that if you have to do something three times or more, you should automate it. Imagine that a task takes you a minute to do, twice a day. Now imagine that you could write something that does it for you, but it would take an hour. Initially, you'll have lost an hour, but after the first month you'll be breaking even, as you've saved those two minutes per day. Then after the second month, you've essentially gained a free hour. Automation is a developer's best friend. Some things are easier to automate than others, but almost anything can be automated. In this talk, we'll take a look at what can be automated, what tools are available to help us and crucially, *if* we should automate it. Surprisingly, sometimes the answer to the question "should we?" is "no".

Transcript

1. Automation Automation Automation Michael Heap (@mheap) Developer at DataSift Presented at PHP UK, Feb 2016
2. Me! I’m Michael I’m @mheap Developer at DataSift
3. Automation
4. 1. What is automation? 2. A step by step guide to automation 3. Making it institutionalised 4. Thinking outside the box 5. I'm convinced! Let's automate 6. Useful tools
5. 0. XKCD 1. What is automation? 2. A step by step guide to automation 3. Making it institutionalised 4. Thinking outside the box 5. I'm convinced! Let's automate 6. Useful tools
7. 1. What is automation? 2. A step by step guide to automation 3. Making it institutionalised 4. Thinking outside the box 5. I'm convinced! Let's automate 6. Useful tools
8. What is automation?
9. ./scr_u -v -S 1024 -t -d /tmp
10. ./generate_stock_update.sh
11. What is automation?
12. Why Automate?
13. #1 Reason
14. #1 Reason People...
15. #1 Reason People... Have good intentions, but no time
16. #1 Reason People... Have good intentions, but no time Don't write tests
17. #1 Reason People... Have good intentions, but no time Don't write tests Don't run tests
18. #1 Reason People... Have good intentions, but no time Don't write tests Don't run tests Don't write/read documentation
19. #1 Reason People... Have good intentions, but no time Don't write tests Don't run tests Don't write/read documentation Are not deterministic
20. What other reasons?
21. Make money with less effort
22. Your company wants less overhead
23. Spend more time with partner / kids /
24. Spend more time with partner / kids / League of Legends
25. Automation is about...
26. Fear
27. Fear costs £££
28. Fear makes people reckless
29. Fear leads to bad decisions
30. Fear leads to bad productivity
31. Automation isn't about being lazy
32. Automation is about being efficient
33. So, we should automate everything right?
34. No
35. Feel the pain
36. Security upgrades
37. Anything you need to see
38. What should we automate?
39. Everything else
40. Deployments
41. Reporting
42. CRUD Generation
43. Anything & Everything
44. Arguments against automation
45. “Our system is too complicated to automate”
46. “We don't have time to automate”
47. 1. What is automation? 2. A step by step guide to automation 3. Making it institutionalised 4. Thinking outside the box 5. I'm convinced! Let's automate 6. Useful tools
48. When should we automate?
49. A step by step guide
50. Do it by hand (make notes)
51. Automate the first part
52. Automate the second part
53. All automated
54. Run unattended
55. That's all 5 steps
56. What to automate
57. Start small
58. Start with the whining
59. “Deploying is too hard”
60. $ git checkout staging $ git pull origin staging $ git merge feature/new-awesomeness $ git push origin staging $ cap staging deploy:full
61. Ignore it?
62. $ deploy-staging feature/new-awesomeness
63. $ git checkout staging $ git pull origin staging $ git merge feature/new-awesomeness $ git push origin staging $ cap staging deploy:full
64. $ deploy-staging feature/new-awesomeness
65. Start with the whining
66. 1. What is automation? 2. A step by step guide to automation 3. Making it institutionalised 4. Thinking outside the box 5. I'm convinced! Let's automate 6. Useful tools
67. Centralised automation
68. Enter CI!
69. Code changes => Run tests
70. New servers
71. Report generation
72. Not just for builds
73. CI == Automation
74. Continuous Integration
75. Centralised Information
76. Public Information
77. 1. What is automation? 2. A step by step guide to automation 3. Making it institutionalised 4. Thinking outside the box 5. I'm convinced! Let's automate 6. Useful tools
78. Us
79. Us
80. Docblocks
81. Generators
82. Bootstrapping
83. Composer packages
84. Us The box
85. Crazy ideas
86. DEMO TIME
87. 1. What is automation? 2. A step by step guide to automation 3. Making it institutionalised 4. Thinking outside the box 5. I'm convinced! Let's automate 6. Useful tools
88. Business buy in
89. It's hard work
90. Quick wins
91. Keep it quick
92. Developer buy in
93. Automation is debt
94. Error handling
95. Idempotency
96. Build on the shoulders of giants
97. Triggering actions
98. Visibility
99. Slack
100. 1. What is automation? 2. A step by step guide to automation 3. Making it institutionalised 4. Thinking outside the box 5. I'm convinced! Let's automate 6. Useful tools
101. Available tools
102. Vagrant/Virtualbox
103. Openstack
104. Puppet Chef Ansible
105. IDEs
106. Liquibase
107. Jenkins / GoCD
108. Amazon AWS
109. Terraform
110. Consul
111. Bash / Python / Other
112. Slack
113. Final considerations
114. Manual tasks
115. Security
116. Pipelines
117. Implementation
118. Recommended starting point
119. In summary
120. Thanks! I’ve been @mheap, you’ve been awesome. Please leave feedback on Joind.in https://joind.in/talk/265d5