What Kubernetes Really Takes

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What Kubernetes Really Takes - Be aware of the 8 projects disguised as one!

And insightful and super condensed summary of the biggest of many, many hidden details of implementing Kubernetes, co-authored by Neil Cresswell and Steve Wade.

The eight hidden projects are all so true, I’ve seen them in multiple organisations but could never have put them in words let alone so succinctly.
This list will take it’s place in my toolbox alongside the 12 factors, OWASP top 10, Start things right etc.

In summary the 8 projects are:

  1. Application Refactoring - Making legacy apps container-ready
  2. Container Supply Chain - Standardising builds, scanning, and registries
  3. Platform Operations - Running Kubernetes itself
  4. CI/CD Transformation - Rebuilding entire delivery pipelines
  5. Zero Trust Networking - Securing container-to-container communication
  6. Cloud-Native Observability - Monitoring ephemeral infrastructure
  7. Everything-as-Code - Adopting GitOps and declarative infrastructure
  8. Platform Engineering - Making it actually usable for humans

I believe that most organisations will find that once they've finished these 8 projects in preparation to implement Kubernetes they probably don't need to have Kubernetes to get the benefits it once promised. Unfortunately in many cases the "Kubernetes project" is the only way to clean house and get the resources to tackle the above projects.