How to get into modern software development as an SMB - Part 1

Helping fellow SMEs is the focus of webbar and myself, so I hope you can take away something for your business.

Pain, Performance-Issues, and the constant feeling of being at a dead end. The background story.

This headline wraps up my experience building, deploying, and maintaining applications for the last two decades. It started calmly with PHP back in the day, but things changed when the market raised requirements and the demand grew. We made technology decisions on current standards, but several years ago, we realized we ran into a dead-end scenario. The performance went down while we pressed more and more features into a foundation not suited for that. As a result, changes took longer to deploy, and the pressure of business demand went through the roof.?

The technology foundation was not sustainable anymore. It even appeared to harm the business after more frequent outages, and the Mean-Time-to-Recovery (#MTTR) went into unacceptable spheres.

It was time for a change, so I started a modernization journey. But, at the same time, I was unaware of the?large gap?between the traditional way of developing applications and new approaches like?#devops?and?#cloudnative?and the topics coming with those two overarching approaches.

Then I understood the real reason.

The problem on this journey was constantly feeling overwhelmed by everything one needed to learn to understand and build the necessary skillsets.?It felt like no one wraps everything up into something easily understandable. As soon as you know one thing, another one pops up and causes another problem. That causes a feeling of being overwhelmed and helpless at some point and makes you doubt if this is the right way to go.

In the last months, I finally realized why so many Small-to-Medium-Sized companies struggle with keeping up. It took me and my teams years to reach this point, and I dedicated most of my work and free time to it. But unfortunately, this is often not acceptable for smaller companies.

Larger companies, on the other hand, can?hire specialist developers and aggregate them into effective teams, which amplifies the learning effect of everyone in the group. But unfortunately, most SMBs can not afford this, nor are small businesses attractive enough to hire high-grade developers on a sustainable level.

So what can one do to reach the other side?

The Mission: Help SMB tech leads as a fellow to transition without hitting every trap on the way

Our transition leads to a continuous process of learning and enhancing, with one big difference: Everything is in a flow now and progresses constantly. There is no Dead End anymore.

I want to show SMB owners, and tech leads ways to get into this matter without losing focus or becoming overwhelmed and frustrated.?

The focus must be to improve the technologies and skillsets necessary to become a modern SMB DevOps-orientated company utilizing Cloud-Native.?This journey often feels like a never-ending climb-up-the-mountain experience, where you don't see the end. We want to help here because we went on these trails before and feel suited to show what really matters after all.

I do not say you must do DevOps and move everything into the Cloud;?I say you need to understand both worlds to make the right decision for the next decade

Standing still means skipping chances.

If you, as an SMB, only know the traditional way of developing applications and don't look into more modern ways, you will likely make the wrong decisions for the coming years. I do not say you must do DevOps and move everything into the Cloud;?I say you need to understand both worlds to make the right decision for the next decade. This topic is something I can't stress enough and can be applied to every other sector.

How do you know if you are stuck already?

The following infographic displays a list of statements. If you can confirm that every one of those statements applies to your company, you are in a very good state.

If not, you should work on them :)

Focus on culture and define global goals.

You will notice that I will talk a lot about?DevOps and Cloud-Native, and some readers will disagree, which is completely fine. However, these two topics should be the focus for an SMB to maintain the ability to keep up over time.

DevOps?describes the culture of your team, the way you will work, and how you will improve yourself and your products. It defines responsibilities for an entire team and not for single members, which is the foundation for achieving great things in a modern and future-proof way. A DevOps culture will apply the necessary changes to your thinking to gain the ability to make the transition to modern and continuously effective development.

Cloud-Native?is the foundation for your product and your creations. So while you have questions about how to modernize a legacy app or how to start a new product as a start-up, Cloud-Native is the answer.?The result of your journey will be the conclusion that all learning strings will come together in the technologies assembled in what we call Cloud-Native.?The pattern and techniques apply even if you decide to run your apps in a data center.?Align your development process to target Cloud-Native as a platform, and things regarding infrastructure and tech stack will be clear.

This is the first part of a series about modern web development in the SMB sector. Stay tuned to receive updates and upcoming content.