From 0 to 1000 Apps documents The Home Depot's first year of experience with Pivotal Cloud Foundry from 2015-2016. Key points include: - PCF was initially installed on-premises in June 2015 and usage gradually increased over the year. By mid-2016 there were over 3000 apps, 4000 instances, and 1300 unique users. - Lessons learned centered around removing barriers to entry, establishing support models, avoiding capacity issues, and focusing on enabling developers rather than just operating the platform. - An "aha moment" realization was that the team does not just operate infrastructure but instead enables developers, and should view developers as their customers.

1. From 0 to 1000 Apps
The first year of Pivotal Cloud Foundry @ The Home
Depot from a platform operator’s perspective.

2. From 0 to 1000 Apps
The first year of Pivotal Cloud Foundry @ The Home
Depot from a platform operator’s perspective.

3. introductions
setting expectations
reminisce & learn
aha moment
questions
Agenda

4. Well, hi!
15 years
Anthony McCulley
Manager, Application Platforms
The Home Depot
anthonymcculley
amcculley@gmail.com
Startups

5. Platform operator perspective

6. Being a platform operator

7. A year-long retrospective

8. A surprise reveal at the end…

9. A surprise reveal at the end…

10. We ready?

11. Jun 2015

12. June 2015
?
PCF installed on-
prem

13. Jul 2015

14. July 2015
?

15. July 2015

16. Lesson #1
Be empathetic to the
people, processes, and
technology already in
place.

17. July 2015
2 teams using Pivotal Cloud Foundry (Pivotal Labs)
3 foundations (Sandbox, Nonprod, Prod)
? App instances

18. Aug 2015

19. August 2015

20. Dev Forum: Introducing PCF

21. Lesson #2
Let your community know
that a thing exists… and
real.

22. August 2015 – PCF is here but has caveats
Platform requires permission to use it
Platform isn’t self-service
No idea how to charge customers for it…. so we don’t (yet)
1st team goes to production… takes 4.5 hours!

23. Sep 2015

24. September 2015

25. Gave prod access to devs

26. Lesson #3
Use new things as an
excuse to question
everything and do things
differently.

27. September 2015
Enabled dev teams to be Org Managers in Prod
Decided on no chargebacks… PCF is “free” to use
Several teams using their own Slack channels

28. Oct 2015

29. October 2015

30. October 2015
Not much going on…
Data center incident impacts Nonprod for 5 days
Great blameless retro as a result
Attend our first “Cloud Foundry Workshop” with Pivotal

31. Nov 2015

32. November 2015

33. Dev Forum: GitHub, Slack

34. Lesson #4
Establish a reliable
cadence for
communicating to
community.

35. November 2015
Slack doubles overnight to 300 people
We pilot self-provisioning in Non Prod
Pivotal (Josh Kruck) asks me to consider running workshops
I give a videotaped talk at a Cloud Foundry meetup
This spawns internal discussions – “Orange Tape”

36. Dec 2015

37. December 2015

38. Make it accessible

39. December 2015
Josh asks (again) if we considered running workshops
Self-provisioning added for Production
WillItConnect madness begins
Remove need to request Org Manager

40. Lesson #5
Remove all barriers to
entry – human or
otherwise.

41. Jan 2016

42. January 2016

43. Pupil becomes the master

44. January 2016
We start running several PCF workshops
2x a week, every week for next 4 months
800 developers will eventually do workshop

45. Lesson #6
Go beyond operating the
platform – be an advocate,
a teacher, and a thought
leader.

46. Feb 2016

47. February 2016

48. February 2016
Workshop tweaked and rebranded
Removed deeper CF topics
Added organizational change topics
Git, Slack, Full Stack, Paired Programming
My team adopts 100% paired “programming”

49. Lesson #7
Establish a scalable
customer service and
support model.

50. Customer Support
Encourage pair programming
Devs: Ask your pair -> then slack -> then the internet
We dedicate a pair each iteration to 100% customer service
Conversational support.
No tickets
No queues

51. Mar 2016

52. March 2016

53. March 2016
250 devs go through Modern Development Workshop
Highest single month
We create #pcf-operators slack channel
Public channel for matrixed teams to engage
Infrastructure, networking, Pivotal, platform, security

54. Apr 2016

55. April 2016
?

56. April 2016
Production is running out of capacity just as…

57. ”PCF is the strategic platform of choice”

58. May 2016

59. May 2016

60. May 2016
Prod runs out of capacity

61. April 2016
We turn off self-provisioning in Production

62. Lesson #8
Don’t run out of capacity.

63. Lesson #8 (again)
No. Seriously. Don’t run
out of capacity.
Get really good at
monitoring capacity.

64. Lesson #9
Be careful about your
choice of words.
“Use PCF” changed to
“Build 12 Factor Apps”.

65. Jun 2016

66. June 2016

67. June 2016
We stand up 2nd production foundation
We increase capacity on existing foundation
And then…

68. Red Alert: 1st Major Incident

69. Red Alert: 1st Major Incident
Its okay. We
are all
learning.

70. Lesson #10
Don’t over react to first
incident. Avoid
operational scarring.
Takes great leaders!

71. Lesson #11
Have a dedicated team…
dedicated to PCF.

72. Lesson #12
Don’t hand “support” of
platform off to another
team.

73. Jul 2016

74. July 2016

75. Today

76. By the numbers
3000 Apps
4000 App Instances
5800 people in Slack – over 1100 of them in #cloudfoundry
1300 unique platform users
6 foundations (more planned EOY)
14000 cf push – 1500 to Production
in June alone
> 2 billion log messages a month

77. Lesson #12
Don’t police developers.
Study them with user
analytics.

78. Lesson #13
Based on analytics, single
out people and teams to
have discussions with.

79. What’s next?
Motivate teams to be lean with capacity
Showback model
quota vs. utilization ratios
Remove all matrixed dependencies for teams
Automate network and security requests
Community-built smoke tests
Add app tests to our tests on changes

80. I promised an aha moment!
We don’t “operate a
platform”.
We enable developers.
We are a product team.
Developers are our
customers.

81. Thanks! Any questions?