ModernOps: Talking STOSA with Beth Long, Part 1

On this episode of Modern Digital Business, we dive into the world of ModernOps and talk STOSA (Single Team Oriented Service Architecture) with Beth Long.

This is part 1 of a two part discussion with Beth Long, an operations manager for New Relic, and Jeli.io. She is passionate about the concept of STOSA, which was first introduced in Lee Atchison's highly popular book, Architecting for Scale.

Lee and Beth switch roles for a bit, with Beth interviewing Lee on these and related topics.

Clips/Quotes

"Stosa: Stosa or single team oriented service Architecture is an important guiding principle for organizations that have development teams that own and manage applications that are composed of multiple services."

— Lee Atchison 00:00:00

Accountability and Ownership in Service-Based Architectures: "Each service needs to have a team that owns that service 100%, all aspects of that service. And it's a one to end relationship...but each of those services has exactly one team owner...that ownership has to be well understood throughout the organization, well known, well documented..."

— Lee Atchison 00:03:30

The Impact of Clear Visibility on Company Culture: "And that kind of culture tends to arise when there's confusion and frustration. And that's a byproduct of not knowing where the problems are and not understanding. And so when you have that clear visibility, you can reduce that tendency because now you know what's happening and where and why, and you can actually get traction on the problem."

— Beth Long 00:12:33

The Challenges of Meeting SLAs in Cloud Services: "If I had a requirement that I couldn't meet with my dependencies requirements, it was my responsibility to get creative, to find a solution. Whether that was caching running instances to attach later or whatever it was, it was my responsibility to solve that problem. I could do that by getting creative. I could do that by negotiating with my partners to have better or different SLAs available to me."

— Lee Atchison 00:13:16

Ownership and Boundaries: "If an organization has a microservices architecture and the boundaries have become fuzzy over time, they should be cautious when dividing up ownership and making it a single team. There are rules of thumb that they can think about to avoid complications."

— Beth Long 00:17:36

"Shared Tooling and Service Responsibility: Even though those teams own services that are shared in terms of their usage, but they still own a service and they're still responsible for that service and they're still responsible."

— Beth Long 00:23:02

Management Attitudes Towards Internal Customers: "There's this kind of this attitude that if we're doing work for our internal customers, like, we should be doing as little of that as possible. And that always frustrated me because I thought, no, this is the inner workings of a body."

— Beth Long 00:24:49

"Stosa and the Human Body: There's so many systems that have to work together and they're self-dependent on each other for them to work together."

— Lee Atchison 00:25:35

Questions and Answers

1. What is STOSA?

Answer: STOSA stands for Single Team Oriented Service Architecture. It is a management model for organizations with development teams that manage applications composed of multiple services.

2. What are the key principles of STOSA?

Answer: The key principles of STOSA include ownership, self-contained services, clear APIs and SLAs, accountability, efficient problem resolution, and optimization of scalability and availability for cloud-native applications.

3. How does STOSA support internal customers?

Answer: STOSA emphasizes actively supporting internal customers by assigning development teams to specific services and making them responsible for all aspects of managing those services, from development to deployment to problem-solving.

4. How does STOSA handle service failures and accountability?

Answer: STOSA emphasizes individual responsibility for services, even if dependencies are failing. It encourages individuals to identify the problem's source, establish SLAs, and proactively fix issues to meet customer expectations.

5. Are shared services allowed in STOSA?

Answer: Shared services are acceptable in STOSA, but the service owner remains responsible for the deployment outcome. They can subcontract deployment work to shared teams, but they are still accountable.

6. How does STOSA handle ownership of shared tools?

Answer: In STOSA, the responsibility for a useful shared tool lies with the tool owner. Central teams can exist and provide useful tools, but service owners retain ownership and responsible metrics should reflect customer satisfaction.

7. What is the role of internal customers in STOSA?

Answer: Internal customers are considered equally important as external customers in STOSA. Meeting the needs of internal customers is crucial, as they play a significant role in meeting the needs of external customers.

8. How does STOSA promote organizational scalability and availability?

Answer: STOSA aims to create an organization that can scale without availability, deployment, and scaling issues. It provides guiding principles and practical ideas to achieve this goal.

9. How did the speaker handle SLA issues with Elastic Beanstalk?

Answer: The speaker faced SLA challenges with Elastic Beanstalk due to the performance of underlying systems. They implemented creative solutions, such as using a pool of pre-running EC2 instances, caching, and negotiating with partners, to meet SLAs.

10. Where can listeners find more information about STOSA?

Answer: Listeners can visit stosa.org to explore the criteria and details of the STOSA philosophy. They can also find books, courses, and articles on the speaker's website for further learning.

Today on Modern Digital Business

Thank you for tuning in to Modern Digital Business. We typically release new episodes on Thursdays. We also occasionally release short-topic episodes on Tuesdays, which we call Tech Tapas Tuesdays.

If you enjoy what you hear, will you please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, or directly on our website at mdb.fm/reviews?

If you'd like to suggest a topic for an episode or you are interested in being a guest, please contact me directly by sending me a message at mdb.fm/contact.

And if you’d like to record a quick question or comment, click the microphone icon in the lower right-hand corner of our website. Your recording might be featured on a future episode!

To ensure you get every new episode when they become available, please subscribe from your favorite podcast player. If you want to learn more from me, then check out one of my books, courses, or articles by going to leeatchison.com.

Thank you for listening, and welcome to the modern world of the modern digital business!

Useful Links

• STOSA - Single Team Oriented Service Architecture
• Architecting for Scale, 2nd Edition, O’Reilly Media

About Lee

Lee Atchison is a software architect, author, public speaker, and recognized thought leader on cloud computing and application modernization. His most recent book, Architecting for Scale (O’Reilly Media), is an essential resource for technical teams looking to maintain high availability and manage risk in their cloud environments. Lee has been widely quoted in multiple technology publications, including InfoWorld, Diginomica, IT Brief, Programmable Web, CIO Review, and DZone, and has been a featured speaker at events across the globe.

Take a look at Lee's many books, courses, and articles by going to leeatchison.com.

Looking to modernize your application organization?

Check out Architecting for Scale. Currently in it's second edition, this book, written by Lee Atchison, and published by O'Reilly Media, will help you build high scale, highly available web applications, or modernize your existing applications. Check it out! Available in paperback or on Kindle from Amazon.com or other retailers.

Don't Miss Out!

Subscribe here to catch each new episode as it becomes available.

Want more from Lee? Click here to sign up for our newsletter. You'll receive information about new episodes, new articles, new books, and courses from Lee. Don't worry, we won't send you spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Mentioned in this episode:

LinkedIn Learning Courses

Are you looking to become an architect? Or perhaps are you looking to learn how to drive your organization towards better utilization of the cloud? Are you you looking for ways to help you utilize a Cloud Center of Excellence in your organization? I have a whole series of cloud and architecture courses available on LinkedIn Learning. For more information, please go to leeatchison.com/courses or mdb.fm/courses.

Courses by Lee Atchison

Atchison Academy

What do 100,000 of your peers have in common? They've all boosted their skill set and career prospects by taking one of my online courses. https://mdb.fm/courses

Business Breakthrough 3.0

With a combined 60 years of business and technology experience, experts Lee Atchison and Ken Gavranovic provide a no-nonsense, step-by-step methodology to clarify how your company actually operates in order to uncover the entrenched patterns that are holding you back. They explain that leading by gut instinct will keep you spinning in circles, while putting your key business data to work will help you grow a thriving organization. Based on the author's experience working with hundreds of leaders around the world, the Business Breakthrough 3.0 approach not only leverages the universal motivational drivers embedded in every person, but uses data to identify what's working and what's not within your company. Business Breakthrough 3.0 involves five distinct processes: 1. Establishing and actively embracing a company mission, vision, and set of core values 2. Using a formal critical-thinking framework to organize how your company makes decisions 3. Understanding what to measure and knowing how to use the data correctly Optimizing your organizational structure to drive successful actions 5. Leveraging a market growth strategy for sales success. Business Breakthrough 3.0 is the ultimate guide to overcoming entrenched patterns and building a highly profitable organization that attracts and retains people who truly love their jobs.

Business Breakthrough 3.0