Kevin LaBranche: Leading teams through DevOps - Episode 251

Kevin is a software developer who finds great joy in teaching and learning from others. He's been honing my craft for over two and a half decades. If he's not in code, he's near it. Kevin is often working on practices and processes that improve the engineering excellence of the team.

Currently, Kevin is in an architecture/lead development position at Northern Arizona University. He develops best practices tailored to the team and company culture. Kevin is a strong believer in applying systems thinking to all he does.

Topics of Discussion:

[2:13] How Kevin discovered his passion for software, and proof you can be successful even if you are bad at math!

[4:51] Kevin loves giving back to others by offering his mentorship.

[5:15] How we can adjust to a changing culture.

[8:09] The evolution of his DevOps team.

[12:11] The idea of being able to read the code.

[13:06] How do you start the DevOps journey?

[15:05] What is a build script? Why is it important, and what are the most important components that need to be in the build script, in Kevin's opinion?

[20:16] What are the items that Kevin likes to make sure are in the DevOps environment when developers are starting a new application?

[23:00] Creating a new web application in an existing environment vs. a new environment.

[27:12] The importance of getting value out the door.

[29:41] Safe database deployment, safe database changes.

[32:45] Kevin's chosen practice for using toggling and deprecating feature flags along with some of his favorite tools and libraries.

[34:01] Protecting against API changes with third-party services.

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