Today, our systems are made up of a patchwork of tools and services from different companies. We no longer need to be experts outside of our core business model. Companies now make it relatively accessible and affordable to use everything as a service, rather than creating everything from scratch. The days of running your own SMTP server are gone; there’s an API for that. But how did we get here, and where do we go from here? Most importantly, how do we connect this patchwork of tools and services together without wanting to pull our hair out while also dealing with a whole new set of challenges with external services?

In this talk, we will discuss the importance of glue work today, which is often both underutilized and undervalued, while developing and operating software compared to previous decades. We will also learn how to elevate glue work’s value and utilization and explore how to use glue work to improve the development or operational experience.

Taylor Barnett is a Senior Community Engineer at Transposit. She is passionate about building great technical user experiences with an emphasis on empathy within Product and Documentation and spends a