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jameswhite manifesto

In his talk at Puppetconf 2013, James Fryman mentioned a blog post by James White which contains a list of guidelines for management which has come to be known as the jameswhite manifesto.

Here’s the same list but unconstrained by a fixed-width text box so you can actually read it. 🙂

Rules

On Infrastructure

  • There is one system, not a collection of systems.
  • The desired state of the system should be a known quantity.
  • The “known quantity” must be machine parseable.
  • The actual state of the system must self-correct to the desired state.
  • The only authoritative source for the actual state of the system is the system.
  • The entire system must be deployable using source media and text files.

On Buying Software

  • Keep the components in the infrastructure simple so it will be better understood.
  • All products must authenticate and authorize from external, configurable sources.
  • Use small tools that interoperate well, not one “do everything poorly” product.
  • Do not implement any product that no one in your organization has administered.
  • “Administered” does not mean saw it in a rigged demo, online or otherwise.
  • If you must deploy the product, hire someone who has implemented it before to do so.

On Automation

  • Do not author any code you would not buy.
  • Do not implement any product that does not provide an API.
  • The provided API must have all functionality that the application provides.
  • The provided API must be tailored to more than one language and platform.
  • Source code counts as an API, and may be restricted to one language or platform.
  • The API must include functional examples and not requre someone to be an expert on the product to use.
  • Do not use any product with configurations that are not machine parseable and machine writeable.
  • All data stored in the product must be machine readable and writeable by applications other than the product itself.
  • Writing hacks around the deficiencies in a product should be less work than writing the product’s functionality.

In general

  • Keep the disparity in your architecture to an absolute minimum.
  • Use Set Theory to accomplish this.
  • Do not improve manual processes if you can automate them instead.
  • Do not buy software that requires bare-metal.
  • Manual data transfers and datastores maintained manually are to be avoided.
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