12 Factor Apps
The 12 factor app sets guidelines for designing software for deployment pipelines. They're a great starting point that can be improved upon. See why in this episode.
In the modern era, software is commonly delivered as a service: called web apps, or software-as-a-service. The twelve-factor app is a methodology for building software-as-a-service apps that:
- Use declarative formats for setup automation, to minimize time and cost for new developers joining the project;
- Have a clean contract with the underlying operating system, offering maximum portability between execution environments;
- Are suitable for deployment on modern cloud platforms, obviating the need for servers and systems administration;
- Minimize divergence between development and production, enabling continuous deployment for maximum agility;
- And can scale up without significant changes to tooling, architecture, or development practices.
The twelve-factor methodology can be applied to apps written in any programming language, and which use any combination of backing services (database, queue, memory cache, etc).
Resources
- The 12 Factor App
- My Review & Analysis on The DevOps Handbook
- My Review & Analysis on Accelerate
- Software Development in 3 Principles & 4 Metrics
Books
- The DevOps Handbook by Gene Kim, Jez Humble, John Willis, Patrick Debois
- Accelerate by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim