Build Faster Than AEM

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