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

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

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

@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