MDB Weekly for Jan 9, 2023

This week, we're going to start with some news. I've just launched my latest course architecting for scale and introduction. This course, which is available free of charge is a video introduction to my O'Reilly Media book, Architecting for Scale. In it, I take two of the more popular topics from the book. That being Service Tiers is, and the Two Mistakes High modality, and present them in a video format complete with a lesson book and quizzes. This course is short and it's designed to simply introduce you to the type of information that you can learn from my book. It also is an introduction to my new training portal Atchison Academy. This is my first course created exclusively for this academy, but more courses are in the works, including a master course on modern digital business. You can also see all of my LinkedIn Learning courses in the academy as well. Check it out. Go to leeatchison.com/courses, or click the courses link from anywhere in my website. This link, we'll also be in the show notes. Given that this is all brand new. I'd love your feedback. Please send me a message, letting me know what you think of this new academy, and also let me know what you'd like to see in my planned premium courses. Next up, come and listen to me as I participate in a live panel discussion entitled "Cloud-Native: The Long March" at 11:00 AM pacific time, 2:00 PM eastern time this coming Thursday, January 12th. This panel discussion is a keynote session at TechStrong Research's, upcoming Predict 2023 conference. For more information, or to join us at this virtual conference, go to the predict website for free registration. A link to their website is available in the show notes. And now last week's top story. Simplicity is at the heart of our desire to use cloud native application methodologies. Service-based applications are designed to decrease complexity in individual service components. Using cloud native infrastructures focuses and reduces our available infrastructure choices. Simplicity is core to virtually all cloud native patterns. The very nature of the cloud native pattern is based on simplicity. But one of the fundamental tenants of modern application development, which is driving the cloud native movement, is actively working against the desire for simplicity. You see, modern application architectures encouraged, team empowerment. Team empowerment brings decision-making down to the lowest logical part of an organization. Modern cloud native application methodologies enable distributed decision-making at the lowest levels of the organization. But how much choice should you give your development teams in building their cloud native applications? The answer may not be as simple as it seems. Deciding how much choice to give your teams is not an easy decision. And the one side we want to give our development teams, the freedom to decide how they design, develop and operate their applications. Empowered teams are innovative teams. The more choices you give your development teams, the greater they can innovate. This innovation can lead to many architectural and product advantages, including more customer centric solutions and faster responses to change. This typically results in shorter time to market. More competitive products, higher reliability and availability, and ultimately happier and more engaged teams. However choice has a negative downside. The characteristic that brings you innovative customer oriented solutions, also works against simplicity. And increased choice means increased variations in decisions that are made with your cloud native applications. More variations, increase the overall application complexity. Put quite simply the more choices you give your team. The more variations they use. The more variations they use, the more complex your overall application becomes. You see, choice becomes complexity. At the cost of simplicity. How can we enable our teams without hurting our applications long-term maintainability? Well, take a look at my article "Choice vs. Complexity in Cloud-Native Applications" published last week in Container Journal. A link is available in the show notes.