What to ask your agency about container orchestration

The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on container orchestration, these questions are worth asking early.

Cloud work rewards teams who automate early and punishes teams who click through consoles. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

Questions worth asking

• Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
• How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
• What happens if it needs changing in a year?
• What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?

What a good answer sounds like

Orchestration solves real problems and creates new ones. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

Understand what breaks before you depend on it. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

The short version

Operability is a feature, and it has to be built rather than bought. Three things worth confirming about container orchestration before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Understand what breaks before you depend on it — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.