Will's Blog
Taking a look at Cloudflare Workers
23 Jan 2019
Cloudflare Workers is a new serverless code execution platform based on the open source V8 Javascript engine, running Javascript functions with very precise billing and automating global distribution.
Thoughts on AWS re:Invent 2018
04 Jan 2019
A summary of the AWS re:Invent conference 2018 featuring plenty of new announcements about serverless, machine learning, managed services and more.
Get alerts when an S3 bucket is made public in your AWS account
19 Feb 2018
Avoid accidentally leaking customer data: using CloudTrail logs, CloudWatch Events, a NodeJS lambda function and Amazon SNS you can get email alerts when someone creates or modifies an S3 bucket to be public in your account.
Making sense of AWS re:Invent
21 Jan 2018
Amazon relentlessly release new features and services all the time, but their efforts aren't random. I use an example with a Wardley Map to illustrate how AWS pushes 'undifferentiated heavy lifting' further up the value chain towards users, and advocate for moving up the abstraction layers ahead of the wave.
AWS reInvent 2017 Recap
16 Jan 2018
A summary of the new product and service announcements I think were most relevant at the AWS re:Invent conference in 2017. EKS and Fargate are revealed, serverless and IoT services get a big boost, and machine learning becomes much more accessible.
Github Satellite 2017
23 May 2017
Keynote and presentations from the Github Satellite conference in London, the first associated conference spinning off from Github Universe bringing together Github partners, customers and developers on how they collaborate and develop software
AWS API Gateway Java lambda proxy request and response objects
12 Dec 2016
Use these request and response classes in order to access the whole HTTP request using an AWS Lambda proxy integration in API Gateway
Configure AWS Lambda in Java using DynamoDB
09 Nov 2016
Configure your lambdas with different values in each deployment environment with a context-wrapper class that uses naming conventions to store config in DynamoDB and fetch & cache it at request handler startup
Courtesy Client design pattern for web services
17 Jul 2016
Enable reuse of common client code across microservices by publishing a courtesy client for your service for other applications to use. Includes sample application for Dropwizard services written in Java.
CAP Theorem for the Business
13 May 2016
Treating an organisation as a distributed system, apply CAP theorem to identify a choice between autonomy of decision making and uniformity of results.
Internet of Things, or Your Property as a Service
16 Feb 2016
Stick a sensor in it, add wifi to it, gather all the data and show a fancy graph on the iPhone. Now you can micromanage your entire life, but what does it cost?
Why I'm not replying to your offer on LinkedIn
22 Jan 2016
Some common antipatterns observed from recruitment messages on LinkedIn - what not to send and how to make your message more likely to be considered.
Make Decisions With Data, Not Anecdotes
02 Oct 2015
Add metrics and stats collection to your system to enable making decisions about change with real data and not just best guesses or suppositions. Build graphs that show you how the system really runs from an operational and business perspective.
Starting a New Project as a Technical Architect
25 Apr 2015
Getting the lay of the land - who to talk to and what to ask when you start into a project that is currently underway
QCon London 2015 Day Three
13 Mar 2015
Conference sessions from the third day of QCon in 2015. Talks from Roy Rapoport, Dan North, Phil Wills, Todd L. Montgomery, Phil Calçado, Yoni Goldberg and Michael Brunton-Spall
QCon London 2015 Day Two
09 Mar 2015
Conference sessions from the second day of QCon in 2015. Talks from John Wilkes, David Pollack, Jessie Frazelle, Colin Humphreys and Paula Kennedy, Peter Lawrey, Torben Hoffman
QCon London 2015 Day One
04 Mar 2015
Conference sessions from the first day of QCon in 2015. Talks from Rebecca Parsons, Peter Pilgrim, Adam Tornhill, Colin Garlick, Rachel Laycock, Mike Pearce and Betty Enyonam Kumahor
"It Depends"
02 Mar 2015
Despite being the trigger for people to reply 'Consultants, eh?' in many cases it's the shortest correct answer you can get. This is your cue to listen up for the nuances.
Reading List Progress
25 Feb 2015
Progress on 2014's Reading List and thoughts for next books to read.
Git rebase to change history for the better
25 Feb 2015
Squash your local history of work-in-progress commits into a single commit of a working feature to keep history clean across a shared codebase
Application Health Checks with DropWizard
04 Dec 2014
Manage microservice components and enhance monitoring by using DropWizard health checks to report on the health of your applications.
Antipatterns and Antidotes
09 Apr 2014
Antipatterns in agile practices and some discussion of means to address them. Taken from my section at the BelTech2014 Agile Masterclass tutorial.
QCon London 2014 Day One
15 Mar 2014
The first day of QCon London 2014 with opening keynote from Damian Conway, talks from Daniel Schauenberg, Damon Edwards, Graham Steel, Dave Farley, Michael Nygard, Ola Ellnestam, and closing keynote from Tim Bray
2014 Reading List
27 Jan 2014
My current reading list for the year. I aim to update this post with tl;dr reviews when I'm finished with each book.
Beginning with Kanban
21 Nov 2013
Starting to implement the Kanban approach is easy as the focus is on evolutionary change. Beginning with your kanban board, start to embrace the practices and principles.
Kanban: Beyond the Board
20 Nov 2013
The Kanban Method is a lot more than just cards on a notice board. Using the principles of Kanban you can evolve your current process into a process of continuous improvement.
The New Economics
06 Nov 2013
My thoughts on System Thinking and Statistical Process Control applied in software development after reading W. Edward Deming's book
Automated Testing and the Evils of Ice Cream
12 Aug 2013
The ideal testing pyramid versus the testing ice-cream cone
The Nirvana Fallacy
30 Jun 2013
Dismissing proposed solutions by comparison to an impossibly perfect alternative feeds procrastination and fear of change. Make a rational attempt at an imperfect but beneficial change now and work towards continuous improvement.
Fear of Commitment? You Need Options
12 Jun 2013
A book review of Commitment by Olav Maassen, Chris Matts and Chris Geary, a business novel about managing project risk
The Minimum Viable Product
03 Jun 2013
A Minimum Viable Product or MVP is a piece of software created with just enough functionality and to just enough of a standard to allow you to test some theory or investigate a risk. A Lean Startup uses cycles of MVPs as their scientific method to find out if they are having a positive impact.
Reacting to Change & Abandoning Sprints
18 Apr 2013
In Scrum, the team are isolated from mid-iteration changes. Anything that comes up in the iteration that isn't already in the current backlog must be ignored or the iteration abandoned. Is this the only way of dealing with this change?
Agile With Development and Testing Phases
22 Mar 2013
Some agile projects have separate test and dev teams and some even run their testing in the iteration after the development. Can these projects really be agile?
QCon London 2013 - Day Three
08 Mar 2013
The third day of QCon London 2013 featuring opening keynote from Ward Cunningham, talks from David Dawson & Justin Holmes, Matt Asay, Mat Wall, Martijn Verburg & Kim Ross, and Douwe Osinga & Jon Tirsen
QCon London 2013 - Day Two
07 Mar 2013
The second day of QCon London 2013 featuring opening keynote from Damian Conway, talks by Glen Ford, Katherine Kirk, Benjamin Mitchell, Dan North, and Gojko Adzic & Lukas Oberhuber
QCon London 2013 - Day One
06 Mar 2013
The first day of QCon London 2013 featuring opening keynote by Barbara Liskov, closing keynote by Damian Conway, talks by Stefan Tilkov, Gareth Rushgrove, Rickard Oberg, Russel Miles, and Alex Papadimoulis