What is Agile Infrastructure?

Agile infrastructure is infrastructure that is easy to change.

The first principle of Agile Infrastructure is simplicity. The more elaborate something is, the harder it is to change or even to fix when it breaks. Making systems simple means that reciovery is easier, operation is less error prone and changes are a lot less costly.

The second principle of Agile infrastructure is performance. A lot of complexity comes from trying to "bolt on" performance. A little bit of early attention to performance can avoid a lot of complexity. Early attention may be as simple as making some homest estimates of what will be required and getting them into the budget.

The third principle of Agile Infrastructure is transparency. Systems that we can see into are easy to operate, maintain and change. Open source helps, so does good documentation. Systems should tell us when something is wrong and let us see clearly how to fix it.

The fourth principle is real requirements. This one is sometimes the hardest to deal with, since no one ever wants to admit that their application is "no mission critical". Here, working closely with the end users of system can be essential. Deliver the capabilities that are valuable to them, rather than focusing on abstract notions like "5 9's availability".

The fifth principle of Agile Inrastructure is to try make choices that reduce the hurdles to making changes. While we may save money by having only one kind of server, we might also be making it impossible to do any project for less than $100,000. Common components are good, but so is flexibility.