A presentation at Jamstack meetup Porto by Phil Hawksworth
How to not be a headless chicken Tips for embracing decoupled content architectures Phil Hawksworth, Netlify
! @philhawksworth
These slides and links findthat.at/chicken @philhawksworth
Why this talk?
9 years as Technical Director at agencies
Clients
Mo clients, mo problems (Mo clients, mo architectures) @philhawksworth unsplash.com/photos/Bli_WDC2oU0
Old challenges
Timeless challenges
Large investments (Time, money, emotion)
The result
Code smells
CMS smells
@philhawksworth findthat.at/smell
@philhawksworth findthat.at/smell
Who is this talk for?
Not to persuade you that headless CMS are a great choice
Help you recommend a headless CMS to your clients / stakeholders
How to not be a headless chicken Tips for embracing decoupled content architectures Phil Hawksworth, Netlify
Phil Hawksworth Director of Developer Experience, Netlify
@ Phil Hawksworth Director of Developer Experience, Netlify
findthat.at/jamstack/book
findthat.at/interesting
Let’s talk 1 2 The old skool and the shift Objections to overcome 3 A few of the benefits
1 The old skool and the shift @philhawksworth
The magnetic attraction of the monolith @philhawksworth unsplash.com/photos/K6kZi3AmGR8
E L P M I S Y L L U F I T U A E B W HO @philhawksworth
D N O C E S A N O D L HO @philhawksworth
C I G A M E V I S N E P EX THINGS THINGS @philhawksworth
Tight coupling Often not well understood @philhawksworth
A product of evolution @philhawksworth
An evolving product @philhawksworth
Experts required And available for those with the budget @philhawksworth
One-stop-shop @philhawksworth
Looooooooong feature lists @philhawksworth
Industry standard, best in class, enterprise grade, globally recognised, reassuringly expensive @philhawksworth
Nobody ever got fired for choosing [ _______ ] @philhawksworth
Except they did @philhawksworth
Sad agencies @philhawksworth unsplash.com/photos/ulPAVuxITEw
Ability to execute @philhawksworth
The CMS became the biggest obstacle to successful delivery @philhawksworth
I found myself seeking, work arounds and shortcuts @philhawksworth
As did customers @philhawksworth
@philhawksworth
@philhawksworth
@philhawksworth
Workarounds became common and formalised @philhawksworth
Results of workarounds outperformed core platform @philhawksworth
If your CMS does not have an API in 2021, perhaps you shouldn’t be using it — Knut Melvær July 26th 2021 (at about 6:51pm) @philhawksworth
” @philhawksworth
2 Objections to overcome @philhawksworth
Moving from a monolithic to a decoupled architecture can be daunting @philhawksworth
All these dependencies add too much risk What if they go away? What if they break? Can they be trusted?
All these dependencies add too much risk Their entire business depends on their continued good standing of this specific service. Their success demands dedicated domain experts. What team would you allocate to each of these capabilities?
Using lots of services will impact performance This is going to run like a dog
Using lots of services will impact performance There is likely to be far more dedicated engineering and infrastructure for each dedicated service than you’d be able to dedicate. A service which is “nearby” isn’t necessarily faster.
We can’t let this content our of our control You’e suggesting we give away the family jewels
We can’t let this content our of our control Each vendor is likely to have more strict and established compliance and regulations than you’d be ready to commit to yourself. Look for certification and compliance when selecting vendors. Decoupling can also mean leveraging first party APIs.
Using these services will lock us in What if we want to make some changes?
Using these services will lock us in Using APIs demands that you have clear delineation and build to defined integrations. You’ll probably have looser coupling and greater flexibility than building everything together in-house.
The headless CMS category is exploding @philhawksworth
3 A few of the benefits @philhawksworth
Decoupling @philhawksworth
Time to market can drastically improve Let alone time to dev environment! @philhawksworth
Your feature roadmap is not in lockstep with a that of the platform @philhawksworth
Your services operated by experts so you can build and differentiate @philhawksworth
The skills you need are widely available @philhawksworth
Front-end code is no longer limited to being a product of a back-end system @philhawksworth
Your results Are back under your control @philhawksworth
To finish @philhawksworth
? U O DO Y Have difficulty providing environments in time for project deadlines? Have frustrations about time to market or the freedom to build what you envisage? @philhawksworth
? U O Y CAN Try this architecture on an internal or ancillary project? Resource a project which would need devs versed in front-end and APIs? @philhawksworth
Courage & confidence @philhawksworth
findthat.at/chicken Thanks @philhawksworth
Jamstack Community Survey 2021 findthat.at/jamstack/survey @philhawksworth
This Wednesday jamstacklondon.com @philhawksworth
findthat.at/chicken Thanks @philhawksworth
The world of headless and decoupled CMS has enjoyed a rapid rise in popularity. But some organizations still need some convincing that it can help them.
Phil explores the benefits and characteristics of a decoupled CMS that originally attracted him to the model and successfully pitch it to companies like Nike and Google.
