The New Stack Podcast

Setting Microservices Up for Success: Real-World Advice

Episode Summary

Maintaining and ensuring the success of a microservice-based system can be challenging. Sarah Wells, a seasoned tech consultant with over 20 years of experience, offers valuable insights in her book "Enabling Microservices Success" and a discussion on The New Stack Makers podcast. Drawing from her tenure at the Financial Times (FT), Wells illustrates how transitioning to microservices and adopting DevOps and SRE practices enabled FT to accelerate software releases from 12 annually to over 20,000.

Episode Notes

Maintaining and ensuring the success of a microservice-based system can be challenging. Sarah Wells, a seasoned tech consultant with over 20 years of experience, offers valuable insights in her book "Enabling Microservices Success" and a discussion on The New Stack Makers podcast. Drawing from her tenure at the Financial Times (FT), Wells illustrates how transitioning to microservices and adopting DevOps and SRE practices enabled FT to accelerate software releases from 12 annually to over 20,000. 

This transformation required merging IT organizations, investing in automation, and fostering team autonomy. Wells emphasizes that successful microservices adoption depends not only on developer expertise but also on organizational structures. She highlights the importance of continuous delivery and proactive communication, especially during critical periods like major news events. Additionally, she discusses the evolving roles of senior engineers and the need for flexibility in defining architectural responsibilities. Wells advocates for "engineering enablement" over "platform teams" to better support effective service management and evolution. 

Learn more from The New Stack about enabling successful outcomes of microservices: 

What Is Microservices Architecture? 

4 Strategies for Migrating Monolithic Apps to Microservices 

Continuous Improvement Metrics for Scaling Engineering Teams  

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