NE Bytes

Microsoft Technology Usergroup in the North East of England.

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From Layers to Vertical Slices


We are happy to have Jon Hilton dialling in to talk about moving from layered architecture to vertical slices in .Net.

From Layers to Vertical Slices

Simplify your code and focus on your features

We've all experienced that moment when your boss/customer calls you and says;

"This is just a small change, I can't imagine it would take more than half an hour or so"

And your heart sinks, because you know what these "small" tweaks actually entail.

You have to find the code, which means navigating all the "layers" of your application.

If you're lucky, you can locate the relevant ASP.NET controller, but you know that's only the start.

3 hours later, you're knee-deep in your Data Access Layer, desperately trying to figure out where this "small tweak" needs to be made, wondering if it's lunchtime yet.

It doesn't have to be this way! You can skip a lot of this pain by leveraging the idea of "vertical slices".

When you build and architect your application around individual features, magical things start to happen;

  • You always know exactly where to look for the code that makes any given feature tick
  • You can use tests to be confident your feature actually does what the user/customer wants it to do (imagine that!)
  • You get to work with (and write) simple code
  • You can get all your work done in a few hours and bunk off early (OK, maybe not, but we can dream...)

So join me as we explore what vertical slices are, how you can approach any feature and specific tips and techniques for making this come to life using ASP.NET Core and MediatR.

Goal Alignment in the world of Multi-Cloud

John Timney

Multi-Cloud brings a whole stack of new challenges to our organisations, and many projects are failing because businesses still do not get the fundamentals correct. Introduce the complexity of multi-cloud, and digital strategies and we have a minefield of problems emerging that our staff are ill equipped to help with.

Before you can align your staff with your vision for the company, so you can consider what a Multi-Cloud strategy might look like, we need a clear picture of what your goals need to be to deliver something of value to that wider strategy, and the problems this brings.

Join our business information technology session, delivered by Microsoft MVP John Timney, who will bring you into the very entertaining world of Dilbert to demonstrate where we tend to go wrong.

We will cover starting our right and some aspects to consider before heading down the multi-cloud path. We will look at the issue of People Power and some tips for lining up the right people! We will go over how to Keep it real by introducing a light framework for creating SMART Goals, and elaborating out a five minute workshop to demonstrate the challenge! We will finish with a simple set of reusable but critical tips on avoiding Drive by Management and dealing with organisational monkeys.

Sit back, grab a free beer, have a slice of pizza. No code, no drama, just some useful entertaining insight into the world of business transformation that can impact the entire success of your Multi-Cloud agenda.