A presentation at Webinar — Build Faster Than AEM by Phil Hawksworth
Build faster than AEM Experiences from enterprise projects Phil Hawksworth, Netlify
hello Phil Hawksworth Developer Experience, Netlify
hello @ PhilHawksworth @ indieweb.social Developer Experience, Netlify
A little background Developer Experience — Netlify Group Technology Director — R/GA Technical Director — The Team British Telecom, Verisign, VM Ware, and various software houses
Building for enterprises — working with enterprise infrastructures
Stories and experiences
Sensitivity
Sensitivity High profile decision and expensive vendor selection Large sunk costs and invested efforts Relationships and dependency
3 stories Unspoken costs, and the power of demonstrations Time constraints trumping infrastructure policy Efforts towards evolving and decoupling
QUESTION When working with AEM what are your biggest challenges?
QUESTION When selecting AEM what were the biggest motivators?
STORY ONE A short project made long Unspoken costs, and the power of demonstrations
STORY ONE A brand site for a large enterprise Adopt new companywide components Project time approaching 2 years Product pages, editorial content Performance and device support issues CMS complexity required developers Localised for several local markets Multiple agencies had tried and failed Developers had web dev, not AEM expertise (and vice-versa) Desire for a premium, luxury aesthetic Design and F/E specialists to work with SI and platform team
this can be simpler https://unsplash.com/photos/ugnrXk1129g
STORY ONE A proof of concept for measurement purposes All page templates built and sample populated using a static site generator 1 developer 9 days build 1 day measurements Not integrated into CMS, but proving capability and effort for f/e delivery Side-by-side video of page load performance showing improvement of ~10 seconds
STORY ONE What about? Deployment time? Localisation? Personalisation? Interactive content? Content management?
QUESTION What else? what other challenges might we raise here?
STORY TWO A sprint to the finish Time constraints trumping infrastructure policy
STORY TWO A campaign site for a large global brand Campaign site retired shortly after event Lead time for dev environment: 4 weeks Few pages, with several campaign phases Short lead time: 6 weeks to event One language and no content management Must use global delivery platform Audit of configured dev environment before approval of QA, Staging and Prod
Time was the forcing function https://unsplash.com/photos/giCBdJJhvGY
STORY TWO A stop-gap development environment which was production ready While formal environment being provisioned, the dev team “prototyped” on Netlify Ready-built campaign phases with instant releases solved Stakeholder reviews on feature branches Formal environments were not delivered and configured before the go-live date
It went wonderfully https://unsplash.com/photos/FiZTaNTj2Ak
QUESTION Provisioning and approval Is this ever a challenge? Techniques for expediting?
STORY THREE Proving a concept Efforts towards evolving and decoupling
STORY TWO Very large enterprise and global brand Small team for a short spike on a brand site Expose existing site content from AEM as content APIs Eagerness to prove composable and Netlify workflow Platform team, developer from SI, product owner Present results to platform stakeholder Desire for additive approach to AEM
Almost https://unsplash.com/photos/0W4XLGITrHg
AEM → JSON API
AEM → JSON API “Possible”
AEM → JSON API “Possible” Content modelling impacts this
QUESTION Explored going headless? Tips for AEM publishing content APIs?
FINALLY Some lessons from these experiences
Proving multiple concepts Proof of concepts to allow measurements and comparison Demonstrate workflows and values in less obvious areas
Inertia and pushback Deep investment brings deep commitment — Current challenges might surface as whataboutism — Expect resistance. Stay pragmatic. Seek out existing solutions or the absence of them
It’s not all or nothing Avoid big bang and big risk — take an additive approach Migration can be done gradually with Netlify redirects and proxying Video demonstration Select pilot projects with well assessed risk
Thank you Let’s have a chat Phil Hawksworth, Netlify
Before Phil Hawksworth became the ambassador of Jamstack and the composable web, he was deep in the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) world as a developer for a global design and advertising agency. Hear Phil’s battle stories and lessons learned from projects over several years:
A 9-day project for a billion-dollar food brand that performed just as well as an equivalent 20-month AEM project.
A six-week project for a major US sports brand that needed a five-week lead time to procure an AEM dev environment—and the stack they used to ship anyway.
Change is hard. So join Phil, in conversation with Netlify product marketer Neha Varshneya, to get firsthand knowledge on how to design killer demos, avoid project sandbagging, and craft a gradual cutover.
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
