The objective of an agile development team is to regularly release high-quality software so new features can be introduced and feedback collected. The goals of a traditional operations team are often in direct opposition as they focus on stability and uptime usually by seeking to minimize change.
At a startup where the operations and development teams are often one and the same there exists a unique opportunity to achieve both objectives by building an environment and a toolset which fosters frequent, but controlled change based on a concrete understanding of how the system is performing. Tools like puppet and Ganglia are invaluable for continuously monitoring the system and collecting the data which can be transformed into knowledge to make informed decisions. This presentation chronicles the learnings and the ongoing journey at Pulse Energy to build a combined development and operations team which delivers weekly updates to a Software as a Service (SaaS) product using an agile approach.
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Video producer: http://www.agilevancouver.ca/