Sometimes lipstick is exactly what a pig needs

Watch talk on YouTube

By VMware (of all people) - kinda funny that they chose this title with the whole Broadcom fun. The main topic of this talk is: What interface do we choose for what capability.

Personas

  • Experts: Kubernetes, DB engineer
  • Users: Employees that just want to do stuff
  • Platform engineers: Connect Users to Services by Experts

Goal

  • Create Interfaces: Connect Users to Services
  • Problem: Many types of Interfaces (SaaS, GUI, CLI) with different capabilities

Dimensions

These are the dimensions of interface design proposed in the talk

  • Autonomy: external dependency (low) <-> self-service (high)
    • low: Ticket system -> But sometimes good for getting an expert
    • high: Portal -> Nice, but sometimes we just need a human contact
  • Contextual distance: stay in the same tool (low) <-> switch tools (high)
    • low: IDE plugin -> High potential friction if stuff goes wrong/complex (context switch needed)
    • high: Wiki or ticketing system
  • Capability skill: anyone can do it (low) <-> Made for experts (high)
    • low: transparent sidecar (e.g. vulnerability scanner)
    • high: CLI
  • Interface skill: anyone can do it (low) <-> needs specialized interface skills (high)
    • low: Documentation in web aka wiki-style
    • high: Code templates (a sample helm values.yaml or raw terraform provider)

Recap

  • You can use multiple interfaces for one capability
  • APIs (proverbial pig) are the most important interface b/c it can provide the baseline for all other interfaces
  • The beautification (lipstick) of the API through other interfaces makes users happy