A show about getting your best ideas into the world and seeing what happens. We talk about code, ops, infrastructure, and the people that make it happen. Gerhard Lazu and friends explore all things DevOps, infra, and running apps in production. Whether you’re cloud native, Kubernetes curious, a pro SRE, or just operating a VPS… you’ll love coming along for the ride. Ship It honors the makers, the shippers, and the visionaries that see it through. Some people search for ShipIt or ShipItFM and can’t find the show, so now the strings ShipIt and ShipItFM are in our description too.
OODA for operational excellence
This week on Ship It! Gerhard talks with Ben Ford, former Royal Marine and founder of Commando Development, about the OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act). Shipping is just a small part of it. The OODA loop that you know is probably the wrong one. We explore Mission & Command, Situational Awareness and a few other practices that will help you deal with complexity as you code and ship. As a former Royal Marine Commando, Ben learned these skills the hard way, and then refined them over many years as a software engineer. Check out the diagrams in the show notes - they are a work of art and precision.
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Featuring
Notes and Links
- Algorithms for Leadership
- Ben’s OODA YouTube playlist
- Team of Teams
- One Mission
- Extreme Ownership
- Turn the Ship Around
- Red Teaming
- The Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence
Ben's OODA remake of John Boyd's original
Ben's representation of OODA - my favourite 💙
The OODA diagram that is easiest to remember