Joe Emison is the co-founder and CTO of Branch, a personal lines insurance company. Before Branch, Joe built five other companies as a technical co-founder, across many industries, including consumer electronics, local government, big data analysis, and commercial real estate. Joe graduated with degrees in English and Mathematics from Williams College and has a law degree from Yale Law School.

Foreword

Part I: The Serverless Mindset

Chapter 1: Introduction

How Many Employees Does It Take to Make and Run a Scalable Social Network?

Leveraging Technology as It Improves

Software Development Has Been Improving Constantly.

But Isn't Being Adopted Effectively

This Book Is For.

Executives in Business and Technology

Enterprises

Startups and Smaller Businesses

This Book Is Not About.

Service-Oriented Architectures

Monoliths and Microservices

No-Code/Low-Code Platforms

Structure of the Book

References

Chapter 2: The Real Cost of Software Development

Types of Costs

Direct Costs

Opportunity Costs

Indirect Costs

Fixed Costs

Variable Costs

Sunk Costs

Controllable Costs

Undifferentiated Heavy Lifting

Code Is a Liability

The Experience Is the Asset

References

Chapter 3: Serverless Architectures

The Amazon Way

What Is Serverless?

Serverless Is a Focus on Business Value

Serverless Means Not Our Uptime

Four Technical Criteria for Serverless

Parts of Serverless Applications

Managed Services

Front Ends

Back Ends and Functions

References

Chapter 4: Serverless Objections, Serverless Success

Loss of Control

Other Common Objections

Lock-In

Performance and Cold Starts

Security, Especially in Multitenancy

Success Stories

iRobot

Lego

The COVID Tracking Project

It Is Just the Beginning

References

Part II: Real-World Serverless

Chapter 5: Introducing Branch

Serverless from the Start

The Problem to Solve

Key Differentiators/What to Build

What to Buy

Minimize the Innovation Tokens

Minimize the Number of Technologies

Organizational Overview

Top-Level Departments

Technology Organization

Architectural Overview and Cloud Bill

Cloud Bills

The Branch Software Development Lifecycle

Problem Definition

Design

Software Product

Development

Deployment

Infrastructure

Running

References

Chapter 6: Introducing Insureco

The History of Insureco

Organizational Structure

Key Performance Indicators

Digital Transformation

Marketing Organization

Technology Organization

Architectural Overview

The Insureco Software Development Lifecycle

UI/UX Design

Product

Developers

Infrastructure

Deploying

Running

Life at Insureco

References

Chapter 7: The Clash of Cultures

The Drivers of the Business Benefits of Technology

How U.S. Insurance Companies Drive Better Outcomes

Launch New Products, New States

Improve User Experience

Speed of Information to Action

How Serverless Drives Faster, Better Action

Most Organizations View Software Development as Too Slow

The Importance of Organizational Attitude

References

Part III: Getting to Serverless

Chapter 8: Getting to Serverless

Winning Hearts and Minds

Don't Build

Downscope

The Metrics That Matter

Change Lead Time (Cycle Time)

Deployment Frequency

Change Fail Percentage

Mean Time to Recovery

Ready to Begin

References

Chapter 9: Iterative Replacement

The Knife-Edge Cutover Doesn't Work

What Is Iterative Replacement?

Event Interception (Reverse Proxy)

State-Harmonizing Synchronization (Asset Capture)

Build New Once

A Very Long Time

Iterative Replacement to Serverless Architectures

Up-Front Research

Databases and Datastores

Scaffolding

References

Chapter 10: Training and Continuing Education

Jobs and People Will Change

Near-Term Job Changes

Systems Administrator to Application Operations

Database Administrator to Database Designer and Catalog Manager

Transitioning Titles

How to (Re)train Your Workforce

A New Hiring Advantage

References

Chapter 11: Your Serverless Journey

Serverless As a Game Changer

Serverless Steps in Startups

Nontechnical Founder

Technical Founder

Founding Engineer

Serverless Steps in Small or Medium-Size Organizations

Nontechnical Executive

Product Management

Development Team

Serverless Steps in the Enterprise for Executives

Serverless Is the Ultimate Step

Part IV: Appendixes

Appendix A: Directory: API Hubs

Appendix B: Directory: Identity and Access Management

Appendix C: Directory: Databases

Appendix D: Directory: Functions

Appendix E: Directory: Managed Services

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