Tracy Bannon

It's the humans that matter...

Forget monoliths vs. microservices. Cognitive load is what matters.

“'Forget monoliths vs. microservices. Cognitive load is what matters.' - Skelton & Pais. I’ve argued for nearly 10 years that Microservice patterns can be overwhelming and when coupled with the explosion in open source, can lead to dramatic cognitive overload."

Posted by Tracy Bannon on Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Burlap or Tapestry? Educational Diversity

My personal journey has taught me the absolute value in diversity; our many varied paths provide a broad set of experiences transforming the fabric of our creative problem solving from burlap to a rich tapestry. With my mental map in mind, how do you think I responded to this question posed to me a few days ago: “I see your undergraduate degree is a BA, why would I listen to you about anything related to software?

Posted by Tracy Bannon on Thursday, January 13, 2022

Perseverance, the IRS, and Partnering

If you never know failure,. you will never know success.

#StraightTalk4Gov and sharing of experience stories is a passion for me. I’ve been thinking about the importance of learn fast/fail fast whether yesterday or earlier. We have a responsibility to share the stories that highlight culture building, organizational change, policy bending, and perseverance A few years ago I had the opportunity to collaborate with Aaron Francensconi, Amin Qazi, Rupesh Kumar and others at the IRS on adopting agile principles and growing a DevOps practice.

Posted by Tracy Bannon on Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Faux Script Kiddie!

Why is it so easly to learn to hack?

A few weeks ago I dusted off my dog-eared copy of ”The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook” by Studdard and Pinto (Yes,I still prefer printed books though I now spring for a second e-version for when I’m traveling.). I’ve installed the most recent version of Burp Suite community edition and OWASP’s ZAP and decided to freshen up my ethical hacking/cyber-student skills. Of course, I am not probing public sites, but rather, using the ethical learning sites:

Posted by Tracy Bannon on Thursday, June 3, 2021

Distributed Everything

Why is it so easly to learn to hack?

A recent post by George Lawton on venturebeat.com highlighted insights by Gartner’s analysts on pressing trends for operationalizing business value (aka value stream/ mission delivery). The key take away is the need to address composability and “distributed everything.” I’ll add a personal “+1” to that assertion given my observations with my clients and federal sponsors. Growth in composable infrastructure is powered by cloud capabilities. Growth in composability of data and analytics is fueled by a few drivers: the need to harness and make use of the data available th enteprise already has, the need to deal with growing volumes of new data available to the enterprise, and the incorporation of multiple analytics techniques into all facets of software intensive systems.

Posted by Tracy Bannon on Sunday, May 9, 2021