Steffan Norberhuis
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snorberhuis.bsky.social
Steffan Norberhuis
@snorberhuis.bsky.social
AWS & DevOps | Founder Rocketleap
I am enthusiastic about resolving incidents well. It is a time when people can come together and show their passion for their product. They get online after hours because a colleague needs help.

If you are interested in improving your organization, I give workshops on the topic. So reach out to me
January 24, 2025 at 10:47 AM
Finally, if you finish a big incident, do a post-mortem with everyone involved and see how to improve. As a manager or architect, it is important to attend to show that operational excellence is just as important as feature work!
January 24, 2025 at 10:47 AM
The fourth step is to not dive on the first hunch. Take a moment to hypothesize multiple theories about what is going wrong and then decide how to react.
January 24, 2025 at 10:47 AM
The third step is assigning roles; key is the Incident Commander, who is responsible to keep incident resolution moving. They keep oversight, make decisions, and delegate. The most important quality: Gravitas. They can make decisions and kick the CEO out of the room if it is a disruption.
January 24, 2025 at 10:47 AM
The second step is to assign a severity level. How much impact is there for how many customers? Incidents need to receive the proper priority. Making clear how big the incident is ensures that.
January 24, 2025 at 10:47 AM
The first step in incident management is to get everyone in a voice call. Your incident resolution is as fast as your communication medium. E-mail, Days. Slack, Hours. Voice Call, Minutes.
January 24, 2025 at 10:47 AM
I always bring a long HDMI cable and have my laptop. But it is crazy how this is not yet solved.
December 24, 2024 at 8:15 AM
December 23, 2024 at 3:06 PM
There is a baseline of adoption and ecosphere richness that technology should pass, and afterward, it becomes less important. AWS CDK and Terraform both pass that bar.

The correct question is: What technology better fits your company?
December 23, 2024 at 8:28 AM
AWS CDK is adopted well enough and has a rich ecosphere. Many libraries can help you solve challenges. You can trust and depend on your company.
December 23, 2024 at 8:28 AM
AWS CDK is similar to Golang. AWS CDK is built internally by AWS and is heavily used.

Of course, there are more stars on GitHub for Terraform. A lot of companies are using Terraform. But all the Azure engineers also star Terraform, which does little to enrich your AWS Terraform ecosphere.
December 23, 2024 at 8:28 AM
Golang was built to solve a problem: a programming language that helps to quickly onboard new engineers. Golang was also very good at building CLI tooling and compiling many platforms. That is why we picked it. It delivered on that promise.
December 23, 2024 at 8:28 AM
- Golang was used intensively by scaleups in the US. Many companies were using it, but it was far from mainstream. Google pushed and carried Golang heavily.

- The Golang ecosphere was vast and strong. We could use so many libraries to solve the challenges we face.
December 23, 2024 at 8:28 AM
I was working at a startup in the Netherlands and we picked Golang. Hardly any company in the NL was using it. Java, for example, would have a massive market share. So, was Golang a lousy choice for us?

No, Golang was great for us!
December 23, 2024 at 8:28 AM
With Rocketleap, I have helped many customers get certified or pass their next audit with automated tooling. I started noticing that there are common phases companies go through and need to complete to prepare for the next audit.

So, I have written down these phases in order.
December 18, 2024 at 10:45 AM
Software Development is a small step in the whole chain of a business.
December 16, 2024 at 8:28 AM
- Customer Support: A new feature is worth nothing without customer adoption, so support customers using the new feature
Operations: perform business processes efficiently that support the business, like filling in WBSO hours
December 16, 2024 at 8:28 AM
- Marketing: making marketing aware that we launched a new killer feature they want to talk about
- Sales: understanding that some features are suddenly a priority to help people choose your company
December 16, 2024 at 8:28 AM
As a software engineer, you can get by with only focusing on the development part. Because other employees will focus on the other 4 parts.

You will be a better engineer by keeping marketing, sales, customer support, and operations in your mental model as well.

An example of delivering a feature:
December 16, 2024 at 8:28 AM
Every week, I start to plan my week
- Marketing: How can I let more people know abot us?
- Sales: How can I help people decide?
- Development: What new features should I add?
- Customer Support: What do I need to do to support my customers?
- Operations: What operations are required for my business?
December 16, 2024 at 8:28 AM