In this episode I speak with Lukas Vermeer, former head of experimentation at Booking.com, and currently working with Vista. He answers the question of whether A/B testing makes sense in small companies and startups, and with small numbers of customers. We also discuss the broader topic of experimentation in general, and applying the scientific method to business development.

Will and Jonathan discuss how to get started with a career in DevOps and how companies can get things started at your company with DevOps.

I once worked with a company that had a take-home assignment as the first stage of an interview process. Ugh. Here are my suggested alternatives.

There are many times when you may want a WIP limit of less than 1 per team member. Here are some examples.

How do you decide between watching James Bond or a romantic comedy? Every decision optimizes for something. What do you optimize for when designing computing systems?

When you can't afford to hire an expert, “moneyball it”. Hire a fractional expert.

Start with a WIP limit equal to the number of people working a stage times a small number, such as 1.5 or 2. Then adjust up or down as necessary.

WIP limits help point out bottlenecks in your process, so you know where to focus attention for improvement.

For a first hire, select a candidate with seniority in line with the role's ability to destroy your business.

Over the 12 months I worked on this project, there were two instances in which deployments were blocked for more than a week.

Describing something as "agile" makes about as much sense as describing something as "big". Agility only exists in relation to something else.