Steve Fenton

Meanwhile in DevOps No.2. Murray shows off his merge chops #MWID #DevOps #Git

This is a rare occasion where I wrote an article AND drew a bad cartoon to capture the fundamental problem with AI. ... and the answer to this problem comes straight out of the DORA research! thenewstack.io/ai-co...

Folks I am sorry but THAT WAS ALWAYS WHERE THE VALUE WAS

Platform teams are mostly responsible for getting changes to production safely. Builds, version control and deployment automation were the top features on platforms. Ephemeral environments was last, with teams with them running broader platforms. What do you think? octopus.com/publicat...

If anyone with a Claude subscription can build it, it isn’t worth much. The value has moved to understanding what users actually need.

Someone send help to this sad data point, from the Future of Platform Engineering report! #PlatformEngineering

Easy is taken! Doing it with LLMs makes it easy. It also makes it undifferentiated from what your intended audience could do with an LLM, so it's also worthless. Maybe there's a different approach in the age of excess...

If you boil out all the water to discover the essence of high-performance software delivery, there's one clear signal that drives all the practices. Feedback!

Meanwhile in DevOps No.94 Four! #mwid #security #php

New from Heidi Waterhouse: Controlled Delivery. "Controlled Delivery is the set of practices that ensure you’re delivering valuable changes to software behavior, not just detonating a change across an entire ecosystem."

Wherefore art thou four?

When output is free, volume stops being a viable strategy. If Midas had depended on the value of gold, he would have found it was no longer valuable. His skill would be as useful as turning everything you touch to ash.

Meanwhile in DevOps No.1 Ellis shows off his deployment chops. #MWID #DevOps

In our Platform Engineering research at Octopus, we found that most orgs calculate Net Promoter Score (NPS) incorrectly. Scott Clark has written up a really useful article on NPS. Find out what it is, when it's helpful, and a whole host of trip hazards to avoid. www.cmswire.com/cust...

Share the oldest meme stored on your current device...

"Here's how [an ai company] does [a thing] and you should do it this way, too." Do we all aspire to lose $11 billion? Maybe look at bootstrapped profitable companies for better ways to do things, rather than those permitted to toss wads of cash on a bonfire.

Imagine a magician showing you a coin trick where they make the coin disappear from their left hand and appear in the right hand. Now list it on the stock exchange as a teleportation company and see how long you can fool everyone. Years!

Everyone has had enough of their whine! 🫳🎤

Platform teams that build from scratch are far more likely to report a lack of a clear strategy. As AI makes building easier, the reason behind the choice matters more than ever.

Add Rego support to Astro! How to supply what Shiki needs to render your Rego code examples. stevefenton.co.uk/bl... #Astro #OPA #Rego

Four Weddings and a Funeral For Tax Purposes.

Predictable. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

It's 2026. In software delivery we're past the point where the baseline set of practices is optional. We need to raise the bar.

One of our survey respondents from our new report, summing up build-or-buy much better than I could: “Build what makes us unique, buy or adopt what’s standard, and always consider long-term cost and lock-in.” I wrote about what our data shows on this for The New Stack 🎉:

Just saw a statistic that 94% of "token spend" is re-reading code and context. When you think of it that way, we're looking at the remaining 6% of usage being what moves the software forward. Explains a great deal of the ROI problem.

This article is for everyone drowning in work. If your to-do list seems infinite and you’re feeling the burnout, you’ll find out how to think like a river and embrace a manageable flow.

Meanwhile in DevOps No.91. AI-first companies. #MWID #AI

Super excited to get a signed copy of 'Building Successful Communities of Practice' Second Edition by Emily Webber 🤩📗 - so much good RSS here, and a beautiful book.

I’m looking to connect with university lecturers and staff. We offer student tickets for @ffconf.org, but they’re easy to miss, and I’d love to give the next generation of web developers the chance to attend a great indie event. If anyone can contact please drop me comment here I can follow up.

Three hours until Cloud Native and Open Source Global Summit. I'm delivering the keynote: AI Has Addictively Fast Feedback Loops and there are lots of great talks in the line up. Join in: www.communitystack.io/conferences/...

Platform teams that build from scratch are far more likely to report a lack of a clear strategy. As AI makes building easier, the reason behind the choice matters more than ever.

If you're thinking of writing a manager README file... this article from Communication Intelligence has a number of different perspectives, so you can read about the benefits and potential trip hazards with this concept. communicationintelli... #Leadership

The Open Policy Agent folks have just released OPA Control Plane v0.8.0. Now you get better sign-in options, secure API tokens, custom source providers, better bundle status, and per-query database metrics. There's more, but I couldn't list 'em all. github.com/open-poli... #OPA #OCP #PolicyAsCode

The mission: "Steve, can we have a professional photo?"

The King Canute legend is looking far more plausible these days, ain't it!

Happy Hummingbird Moth and #Caturday

Another reason to self-publish.

A five-minute experiment on how people see contrast. https://contrastsurvey.earendil.com/

Platform Engineering takes time. In our 2026 Future of Platform Engineering report, we found that 82.0% of platforms running for 3+ years are high performers, compared with 33.3% of more recent platforms. Links for more details below: Report: octopus.com/publicat... Watch: www.youtube.com/watc...

It's high time for #FollowFriday here's my Magnificent Seven! Who should I be following for #DevOps #ContinuousDelivery and #SoftwareDevelopment? Matt Allford Charlotte Fleming Wiredferret! Colin Bowern Luke Jason Gorman John Bristowe

Icon

ICYMI: I co-authored a book on Rego, the policy as code language, with my always-allow buddies, John Bristowe and Matt Allford. Ger the book with a 60% discount: shop.ingramspark.com... Or grab a FREE digital copy from Octopus: octopus.com/publicat... #Rego #OpenPolicyAgent #CNCF

Meanwhile in DevOps No.90 This is the modern web. #DevOps #MWID #Loading

Researching what Continuous Delivery looks like in practice in 2026. If you work anywhere in CI/CD, share your experience (and pass it along!) → oc.to/state-of-cd-su... As a thank you we have Octopus swag, free courses, or a vouchers up for grabs.* *T&Cs: oc.to/socd-terms

Great job from Michael Sheen on House of Games. I'm so happy it's still enjoyable quizzing.