Tim Berglund

Event-Driven Architecture Done Right: Deep Dive

Thursday, 11:00 AM EST

Event-driven architectures are not new, but they are newly ascendant. For the first time since the client-server revolution of 40 years ago, a new architectural paradigm is changing the way we build systems. Apache Kafka and microservices are at the center of this movement.

In this workshop, we’ll discuss the issues that arise turning a monolith into a set of reactive services, including issues like data contracts, integrating with the systems you can't change, handling request-response interfaces, and more. We'll also discuss common infrastructure choices like Apache Flink and Apache Pinot. Hands-on exercises will focus on understanding your organization's data and forming a plan to refactor that monolith that seems like it will never go away.

Distributed Systems in One Lesson

Thursday, 1:30 PM EST

Normally simple tasks like running a program or storing and retrieving data become much more complicated when we start to do them on collections of computers, rather than single machines. Distributed systems has become a key architectural concern, and affects everything a program would normally do—giving us enormous power, but at the cost of increased complexity as well.

Using a series of examples all set in a coffee shop, we’ll explore topics like distributed storage, computation, timing, messaging, and consensus. You'll leave with a good grasp of each of these problems, and a solid understanding of the ecosystem of open-source tools in the space.

Decision Making in Software Teams

Thursday, 3:30 PM EST

Alistair Cockburn has described software development as a game in which we choose among three moves: invent, decide, and communicate. Most of our time at No Fluff is spent learning how to be better at inventing. Beyond that, we understand the importance of good communication, and take steps to improve in that capacity. Rarely, however, do we acknowledge the role of decision making in the life of software teams, what can cause it to go wrong, and how to improve it.

In this talk, we will explore decision making pathologies and their remedies in individual, team, and organizational dimensions. We'll consider how our own cognitive limitations can lead us to to make bad decisions as individuals, and what we might do to compensate for those personal weaknesses. We'll learn how a team can fall into decisionmaking dysfunction, and what techniques a leader might employ to healthy functioning to an afflicted group. We'll also look at how organizational structure and culture can discourage quality decision making, and what leaders to swim against the tide.

Software teams spend a great deal of time making decisions that place enormous amounts of capital on the line. Team members and leaders owe it to themselves to learn how to make them well.