As engineers (developers, devops, network admins, IT and the like), we read blogs, we talk to other engineers, we watch talks....

and we feel small.

Small because:

• We're not doing CI
• We don't have a Chaos Monkey
• Our APIs are undocumented
• We don't have high availability
• We are not pair programming
• We don't have a full inventory of equipment
• etc, etc, etc

We know the things (or some of the things) we ought to be doing to have a mature process. We know that once we are doing those things, they will save us time, money, and sanity. But we don't have the hours, budget, knowledge, and influence to implement them.

This is a talk about:

• not giving up hope
• deciding which improvements are realistic to make
• deciding which changes are the most useful
• prioritizing which changes to focus on first
• selling these changes to management and your fellow engineers

Intended Audience

• Engineers working at smaller organizations
• People working on un(der)-funded FLOSS projects
• Less experienced engineers
• Anyone who sees that their processes could be improved, but doesn't know how to get there.

Notes available on my github page.