Event Processing at Scale + Advocating for Continuous Improvement

This meetup we have two great talks based on case studies. Jeroen will be showing how big data event stream processing, public cloud and machine learning is used to build an APM platform for microservices. Rufus will talk about how to make a business case for technical improvements, running through a case study where Redux state management was used to improve the quality of legacy code.

AGENDA

6:30 PM -- Doors open for refreshments and networking

7:00 - 7:30 PM -- Rufus Raghunath talks about “Practical Quality: Advocating for Continuous Improvement”

7:30 - 7:45 PM -- Break

7.45 - 8.30 PM - Jeroen Soeters talks about "Event processing at scale: An in-depth look at the backend architecture of Instana"

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FIRST TALK: Practical Quality: Advocating for Continuous Improvement

Technical change on a big software development project can be a smart business choice, but it's hard. You have to make tough decisions about improving what's already there versus delivering new functionality. As a developer advocate for Continuous Improvement, your challenge is to facilitate relevant business decisions and execute change effectively.

Rufus will present a success story from one of ThoughtWorks’ current clients in Germany. A large wholesaler with operations across 25 countries, our client asked us to improve and extend their digitalisation efforts. In this context, Rufus led his team to successfully perform a major rewrite of legacy UI code, which included introducing Redux for state management. We will use this case study to identify some practical strategies for applying Continuous Improvement on delivery teams.

We will examine:

• When is change worthwhile? Evaluating quality vs. business value
• Managing tough conversations with your team and stakeholders
• Efficiently implementing change
• Spreading critical knowledge and enabling your team in new technologies

BIO

Consultant. Armchair philosopher. Accidental JavaScript evangelist. Rufus is a software developer from Germany, working for ThoughtWorks London, currently on assignment in New York City. He enjoys being the interface between different kinds of people: technical and non-technical, frontend and backend, ThoughtWorks and client.

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SECOND TALK: Event processing at scale: An in-depth look at the backend architecture of Instana

Instana is an AI-powered APM for Dynamic Applications. This talk is about the backend architecture. At Instana we use AI and Machine Learning to deal with billions of metrics every second. Jeroen will walk you through how we manage to collect, process, store and present that amount of data using mostly Java 8 on AWS, but we'll also see some Cassandra, ElasticSearch, Redis, Kafka and project reactor along the way. Also we will take a look at some of the core algorithms Instana uses for outlier detection, trend detection and predictions. You will take away ideas on how to design your own big data stream processing pipeline and hopefully you will learn a thing or two about monitoring and tracing in general.

BIO

Jeroen is a senior software engineer for Instana where he works on mosts parts of the stack. Jeroen is also a former ThoughtWorker, functional programming aficionado, long-time DDD practitioner, Dutchman and has a keen interest for neuroevolutionary systems. Fun fact: he will rarely say no if you offer him proper Belgian beer.