Philosophy, Challenges, and Opportunities of DevOps on Salesforce (with animation)

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Philosophy, Challenges, and Opportunities of DevOps on Salesforce Gearset DevOps Summit 2022: Level up your Salesforce DevOps

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Aidan Harding Technology Director, Nebula Consulting Over 10 years working on Salesforce A few years messing around on mountain bikes A few years FPGA design PhD in Computer Science

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit How would we describe Salesforce DevOps?

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit How would we describe Salesforce DevOps?

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Let’s dive in… ●It’s not always so simple ●Learning Environments ●The only truth is production ●Don’t “cargo-cult” behaviours from elsewhere ●Some ideas, solutions and benefits

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit The illusion of simplicity

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit The illusion of simplicity I just want to move my code from A to B without drowning in my own tears

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit The illusion of simplicity ● We “just” want to localise this book from US English to British English I just want to move my code from A to B without drowning in my own tears

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit The illusion of simplicity ● We “just” want to localise this book from US English to British English ● So let’s “just” search and replace some terms e.g. pants → trousers I just want to move my code from A to B without drowning in my own tears

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit The illusion of simplicity ● We “just” want to localise this book from US English to British English ● So let’s “just” search and replace some terms e.g. pants → trousers ● Oops! We’ve made particitrousers I just want to move my code from A to B without drowning in my own tears

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit The illusion of simplicity ● We “just” want to localise this book from US English to British English ● So let’s “just” search and replace some terms e.g. pants → trousers ● Oops! We’ve made particitrousers I just want to move my code from A to B without drowning in my own tears

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Differing Learning Environments

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Differing Learning Environments Kind ● Feedback is unambiguous and timely ● Easy to progress by simple doing the work Wicked ● Feedback may be delayed, unclear, or absent ● Hard to progress without deliberate experimentation and reflection

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Differing Learning Environments Kind ● Feedback is unambiguous and timely ● Easy to progress by simple doing the work Examples ● Sports ● Games ● Linters and compilers Wicked ● Feedback may be delayed, unclear, or absent ● Hard to progress without deliberate experimentation and reflection Examples ● Parenting ● Medicine ● DevOps

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit The real world hurts (not all complexity is accidental)

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit The real world hurts (not all complexity is accidental) ●Salesforce sells itself on being easy to configure, so changes made directly in production are a feature not a bug

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit The real world hurts (not all complexity is accidental) ●Salesforce sells itself on being easy to configure, so changes made directly in production are a feature not a bug ●Salesforce prioritises releasing new features over making those features deployable ●Metadata is often stored as data (especially in packages) ●Some updates (e.g. changing the type of a field) are not atomic - they require multiple deployments

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Don’t forget the data, dummy!

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit #GearsetDevOpsSummit The source of truth

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit #GearsetDevOpsSummit The source of truth ●https://developer.salesforce.com/d ocs/metadata-coverage/56

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit #GearsetDevOpsSummit The source of truth ●https://developer.salesforce.com/d ocs/metadata-coverage/56

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit #GearsetDevOpsSummit The source of truth ●https://developer.salesforce.com/d ocs/metadata-coverage/56

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit #GearsetDevOpsSummit The source of truth ●https://developer.salesforce.com/d ocs/metadata-coverage/56 ●At Nebula, we sync 24 metadata items in our CI (about 4%)

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit What is truth? Plato’s cave

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit What is truth? Plato’s cave

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit What is truth? Plato’s cave Source control

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit What is truth? Plato’s cave Source control CI

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit What is truth? Plato’s cave Source control CI Production

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit What is truth? Plato’s cave Source control CI Production Devs 😢

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Source control is truth?

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Source control is truth?

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Source control is truth? ● It only contains a fraction of the metadata

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Source control is truth? ● It only contains a fraction of the metadata ● It can miss changes made directly in production

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Source control is truth? ● It only contains a fraction of the metadata ● It can miss changes made directly in production ● Changes merged into main could still fail to deploy to Production

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit #GearsetDevOpsSummit Cargo cults

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit #GearsetDevOpsSummit Cargo cults You ain’t Google (unless you actually are?)

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit #GearsetDevOpsSummit Cargo cults ●Processes become meaningless without the the intentions behind them You ain’t Google (unless you actually are?)

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit #GearsetDevOpsSummit Cargo cults ●Processes become meaningless without the the intentions behind them ●“Individuals and interactions over processes and tools” You ain’t Google (unless you actually are?)

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit WWII in Melanesia

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit WWII in Melanesia

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Copy the symbols

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Copy the symbols

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Looks about right… but no signal?

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit e.g. Deployment frequency

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit e.g. Deployment frequency

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit e.g. Deployment frequency ●You deploy multiple times per day? But what does that even mean?

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit e.g. Deployment frequency ●You deploy multiple times per day? But what does that even mean? ●If a feature is “in production” but no-one is using it, is it even in production? ●“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” [1] ○ [1] “Goodhart’s Law” Strathern, Marilyn (1997). "'Improving ratings': audit in the British University system". European Review. John Wiley & Sons. 5 (3): 305–321

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Well, this is depressing How about something more constructive?

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Unlocked Packaging

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Unlocked Packaging

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit Unlocked Packaging Clean separation of functional areas Package development really is source- driven All Salesforce tooling Org-dependent can build on-top of messy code Parallel work is easy Not everything is packageable Not great for customising standard clouds Hard to migrate to from a messy codebase Can be hard to manage dependencies Sometimes requires dependency injection Time to start working can be long

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#GearsetDevOpsSummit #GearsetDevOpsSummit Production is truth

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