dougireton/Getting started with Chef - Recommendations

## Getting started with Chef - Recommendations
Per our discussion today we have the following recommendations:

1. Pick a single easy server “role” to automate, e.g. my_web_server.
Get that cookbook installing a single package a single Windows Feature, across all of your environments, including Prod.

2. Then rapidly iterate on that cookbook adding features and deploying through all environments, including Prod.
Build a regular habit of code review. Every change should be reviewed by another engineer.
Feel free to include Chef team engineers on Pull Requests.

3. Ideally you start writing simple tests with the cookbook, which our Cookbook Pipeline will execute on every Git push and merge.

4. Once you are pretty happy with the one cookbook, repeat the steps above with a second role,
taking the lessons learned and applying them to the second cookbook.

5. Don’t worry too much about planning out everything in advance.
Chef and Ruby are easy to change and it’s better to make fast forward progress, even if you have to change it later.
Focus on writing small, testable recipes and using composition instead of creating monolithic recipes.

You are really trying to build a habit of small continuous improvement. This is the path to success.

Thanks,

Doug Ireton
Nordstrom Chef team
	Per our discussion today we have the following recommendations:

	1. Pick a single easy server “role” to automate, e.g. my_web_server.
	Get that cookbook installing a single package a single Windows Feature, across all of your environments, including Prod.

	2. Then rapidly iterate on that cookbook adding features and deploying through all environments, including Prod.
	Build a regular habit of code review. Every change should be reviewed by another engineer.
	Feel free to include Chef team engineers on Pull Requests.

	3. Ideally you start writing simple tests with the cookbook, which our Cookbook Pipeline will execute on every Git push and merge.

	4. Once you are pretty happy with the one cookbook, repeat the steps above with a second role,
	taking the lessons learned and applying them to the second cookbook.

	5. Don’t worry too much about planning out everything in advance.
	Chef and Ruby are easy to change and it’s better to make fast forward progress, even if you have to change it later.
	Focus on writing small, testable recipes and using composition instead of creating monolithic recipes.

	You are really trying to build a habit of small continuous improvement. This is the path to success.

	Thanks,

	Doug Ireton
	Nordstrom Chef team