# Delivery and Practice Published articles for Delivery and Practice. This is one page of public article previews, not the complete archive. Follow Next page to continue. Summaries are not the original full articles. ## The Design Process and Agile Development: Part 1 -- Design Is Collaborative DevFeed: [The Design Process and Agile Development: Part 1 -- Design Is Collaborative]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Daisy Mølving Published: 2026-02-05T06:00:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [8th Light Insights]() Topics: [Agile](), [User experience (UX)](), [Development](), [Self-organizing Team]() Tags: [agile](), [delivery-and-practice](), [design-thinking](), [development](), [development-process](), [experiential-design](), [product-strategy-innovation](), [research](), [teams](), [user-experience](), [ux-design]() ### AI overview Part 1 of a series examines how design thinking and UX research can work alongside Agile development. It argues that iterative design and Agile delivery are compatible, while noting the tension between research needs, rapid timelines, client goals, and incremental development. ### Source excerpt This is Part 1 in our blog series on how the design process works alongside Agile methodology to produce results within an integrated team. Updated 2/5/2026. Originally published 2/2/2024 When it comes to developing new software, not every designer approaches the task the same way. While some use a design thinking approach, looking at the tasks from a user perspective, others use Agile methods, approaching it from an iterative project management standpoint. However, the two approaches are not mutually exclusive. The most successful designers approach their tasks using design thinking which helps inform prioritization within the Agile methodology. High performing teams delivering outcomes through the agile methodology do so with confidence when they know solutions are informed by the voice of the user. Working with Design Thinking and Agile Timelines Designers who've worked alongside Agile methodologies have likely felt the pressure of Agile timelines conflicting with the need for comprehensive design. While the approaches may feel conflicting at first, it's important to remember that both design and Agile methodologies emphasize the importance of working in small iterations to develop products that constantly evolve-- focusing on the smallest modifications that lead to making valuable products and building upon them. However, with its need for preliminary research, I've observed that user experience (UX) design can give Agile practitioners the impression of a waterfall process. Agile teams want to deliver quickly and continue iterating on the project after receiving feedback. As a UX designer, it is my responsibility to establish and fulfil the human need by talking to some users and conducting competitor research before we dive blindly into development. Working as a UX designer in this environment can feel like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. You have a client who cares about the bottom line and wants to get to market quickly and a development team of ## Celebrating Our Beacons: Hugh Sato and Pierce Edmiston DevFeed: [Celebrating Our Beacons: Hugh Sato and Pierce Edmiston]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Juan Santana Published: 2025-11-21T20:31:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [8th Light Insights]() Topics: [systems](), [Tooling](), [User interface design](), [Usability](), [trust]() Tags: [build](), [culture-and-news](), [delivery-and-practice](), [product](), [time](), [trust](), [usability](), [workflow]() ### AI overview 8th Light celebrates Hugh Sato and Pierce Edmiston as Beacon Award recipients, highlighting their complementary contributions in design, engineering, and product leadership. The article describes their work improving a fragmented experimentation platform by unifying its design, workflow, and technical foundations, reducing deployment time from three weeks to the same day and pursuing a fifteen-minute SLA. ### Source excerpt Congratulations to Pierce Edmiston and Hugh Sato, our latest recipients of 8th Light's Beacon Award! Our Beacon Award recognizes team members who exemplify 8th Light's values and inspire us all. Pierce and Hugh represent two different strengths within 8th Light that come together to create meaningful, high-impact work for our clients. Pierce, Sr. Principal Engineer blends scientific rigor with technical and product leadership to turn complex research and modeling into stable, production-ready systems. While Hugh, Principal Designer, elevates that work through a human-centered design lens that makes intricate workflows clear, usable, and trustworthy. He brings coherence where systems feel chaotic and reduces cognitive load, helping teams and customers move with confidence. Both leaders build products from the system out to the experience, ensuring the core is solid and the experience makes the system clear, adoptable, and effective. They design for adherence, flow, safety and change. They prioritize what matters for the business and what will sustain value over time. They translate complexity into outcomes. They build systems people can use, learn from, and rely on. This partnership became a turning point for one of the world's most valuable enterprises, where Hugh and Pierce were brought in to strengthen a critical experimentation platform at the heart of the client's product decisions. When the work began, that platform was fragmented and difficult to operate. Experiment owners with great ideas had to rely on scattered tooling and manual engineering support just to get started. Pierce and Hugh anchored a full turnaround. They joined forces to unify the platform's design, workflow, and technical foundations, ultimately transforming a cumbersome three-week deployment process into a same-day experimentation engine and charting a path toward a groundbreaking fifteen-minute SLA. This shift did more than speed up launches, it elevated experimentation into a strategic, tr ## Using SLOs and OpenTelemetry to reduce alert fatigue DevFeed: [Using SLOs and OpenTelemetry to reduce alert fatigue]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Andy Smith Published: 2025-08-18T19:03:00Z Content type: tutorial Language: en Sources: [8th Light Insights]() Topics: [observability](), [site-reliability-engineering](), [Prometheus](), [OpenTelemetry](), [incident]() Tags: [alert-fatigue](), [delivery-and-practice](), [monitoring](), [observability](), [prometheus]() ### AI overview The article describes how frequent, non-customer-impacting alerts can cause alert fatigue and delay detection of production incidents. It presents Service Level Objectives and increased observability with OpenTelemetry as changes intended to focus engineers on user-impacting failures. ### Source excerpt How to make your customers happy and your engineers even happier It's common for monitoring and alerting solutions on production services to be quite chatty, sometimes producing hundreds of notifications per day. There's a scene in the classic film The Matrix where one of the characters (Cypher) is looking at a screen with green unintelligible code. He's asked: "Do you always look at it encoded?" He responds by telling Neo he doesn't see code, just what it represents. After some time in The Matrix like Cypher, in the sea of notifications you understand what they mean and know what is important. Unfortunately, for your new team members they have to learn what they mean and may have no idea what customer impact these alerts have. If too many of these notifications are not customer impacting and just informational what follows is "alert fatigue", you begin to tune out from them because of the volume. This becomes "dangerous" when you miss something in the noise that IS important. You can bet that the notification you missed will lead to a 3AM support call from an irate customer which is SLO not fun! Scenario I joined an eight person team for a large enterprise client that had a few production incidents. There were two in July which were high stress problems, the team worked impeccably to resolve them. However, users of the website noticed them first, called Customer Support, then it was "all hands on deck" to try and resolve. This is known internally as a "Major Incident"*. The team fixed the issues and everyone was happy but of course the damage was already done, reputation was harmed. We were in reactive fire fighting mode. It doesn't have to be like this. It was not the case that there was no monitoring, there were SLO many Prometheus alerts firing, and that's the problem. Due to the frequency of these alerts, a lot of them were ignored. They didn't tell the engineers specifically that a key feature of the site was not working. Just because a pod has crashed with "o ## Unlocking Safer, Faster Experimentation for a Global Tech Leader DevFeed: [Unlocking Safer, Faster Experimentation for a Global Tech Leader]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Kristin Kaeding Published: 2025-07-18T22:18:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [8th Light Insights]() Topics: [Development](), [systems](), [Deployment](), [iteration]() Tags: [architecture](), [cross-functional-teams](), [delivery-and-practice](), [development](), [engineering](), [operational-risk](), [platform-innovation](), [workflows]() ### AI overview A case study describes 8th Light's seven-week assessment for a Fortune 100 consumer technology company whose growing experimentation pipeline was slowed by manual approvals, fragmented workflows, and unclear ownership. The work combined human-centered design, technical architecture, organizational strategy, and the Double-Diamond process to define a more scalable, self-service experimentation platform. ### Source excerpt Why It Matters At 8th Light, we help enterprise teams remove friction, foster alignment, and build tools that scale with confidence. This project exemplifies what happens when human-driven design meets technical rigor: major time and cost savings. By focusing on systems thinking, user needs, and resilient architecture, the organization created a path forward that supports both immediate impact and long-term innovation. This story is one of many showing how that approach delivers lasting results. The Challenge: A Strong System Slowed by Scale A Fortune 100 consumer technology company built a powerful experimentation pipeline -- one that fueled product innovation across its digital ecosystem. As the platform grew, so did its complexity; manual approvals, fragmented workflows, and inconsistent tools created friction that slowed development cycles and added risk. Rather than patch over the pain points, the company sought a bold transformation to reduce this risk: to turn a solid foundation into a modern, scalable, and self-service experimentation platform. The Goals Accelerate the end-to-end experimentation pipeline Reduce manual bottlenecks and operational risk Align cross-functional teams around shared metrics and ownership Unlock safe, scalable innovation at speed Our Approach: Human-Centered Meets Technically Grounded 8th Light was brought in to lead a seven-week high-level assessment, blending human-centered design with technical architecture and organizational strategy. We followed the Double-Diamond Process to move from discovery to delivery: Problem Discovery Problem Synthesis Solution Discovery Solution Synthesis The TimelineWeeks 1-2: Solving the Friction We kicked off with deep interviews across engineering and product leadership. These conversations uncovered systemic blockers -- ranging from delays in approvals to lack of experiment ownership. Weekly playback sessions helped align stakeholders and refine the focus on the end-to-end experimentation lifecycle. ## 8th Light Honors Rani Zilpelwar with Quarterly Beacon Award DevFeed: [8th Light Honors Rani Zilpelwar with Quarterly Beacon Award]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Juan Santana Published: 2025-07-11T17:27:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [8th Light Insights]() Topics: [Development](), [Software Engineering]() Tags: [beacon](), [culture-and-news](), [delivery-and-practice](), [growth](), [leadership](), [mentorship](), [software-delivery](), [team](), [trust]() ### AI overview 8th Light highlights Rani Zilpelwar as the recipient of its Quarterly Beacon Award. The article recognizes her leadership as a Software Delivery Lead, including managing contractors for a client and mentoring others. ### Source excerpt Congratulations to Rani Zilpelwar, the recipient of 8th Light's Quarterly Beacon Award, a peer-nominated honor that celebrates team members who shine light on our core values. Rani is a Software Delivery Lead with over a decade of experience building high-quality software and high-trust teams. This quarter, Rani's leadership and influence grew significantly beyond her original role with one of the world's largest entertainment providers. Her ability to build credibility with key client leaders resulted in her being entrusted with new leadership responsibilities, including managing a team of contractors on the client's behalf. Beyond the client work Rani leads, she is also deeply committed to the mentorship and growth of those in her circle of influence. Recently, Rani published an insight on "Integrating Agile in the Era of AI", amplifying the voice of her practice and helping to shape the conversation around modern software development. Through her commitment and trusted leadership, Rani is a powerful Beacon to the values we hold true at 8th Light. Her actions illustrate how 'Honestly Builds Trust' and how a commitment to continuous education and growth can fuel limitless opportunity. Our CEO, Jenny Farver, sums it perfectly: Rani doesn't just lead. She blazes the trail. She delivers with purpose, speaks with honesty, and helps make our organization better. If Rani is your manager, you're lucky. If she's not, you're still lucky because her leadership lifts all of us.