Assessment
~/appetizer-labs/workshops

Workshops & Enablement

Off-the-shelf training catalogueSix formats, that work on your own code, your own cluster and your own system — not on a sample project.

~/appetizer-labs/workshops/where-they-fit

Analysis, workshop, delivery

A workshop rarely stands on its own. Usually an analysis comes first to show where things actually break — and delivery follows, so what was learned does not disappear into the minutes. Every format below therefore states what makes sense before it and what comes after. Each part is bookable on its own.

Straight up: only the Go workshop has public course material and a recorded delivery. The other five rest on project work, not on a workshop history. We quote no participant numbers, ratings or satisfaction scores, because we never collected any.

01
01

Go for Teams

A team fluent in Java, Kotlin or TypeScript works independently in Go after two days — including the conventions Go code otherwise fails review on.

Audience
Backend developers moving to Go from Java, Kotlin, C#, Python or TypeScript. Also mixed teams where only a few people write Go today.
Prerequisites
  • Professional experience in at least one statically typed language
  • A laptop with the Go toolchain and the editor of your choice, tested once before the workshop
  • No prior Go experience required
Duration
2 days on-site. Remotely as four half-days within two weeks.
Outcomes
  • Reading and writing idiomatic Go: packages, interfaces, struct embedding, zero values
  • Error handling without exceptions — wrapping, sentinel errors, errors.Is and errors.As
  • Concurrency with goroutines, channels and context, including the deadlocks they create
  • Table-driven tests and benchmarks with the standard library
  • A running HTTP service your team built on day two
Format
Hands-on: roughly half the time is spent writing code. On-site or remote. Delivered in English or German — course material is English.
Group size
At most 12 participants. During the exercises we work with each pair individually, which stops working beyond that.
Follow-up
Two half-days of code review on your own Go code, three to six weeks after the workshop. Bookable together with the workshop.
Evidence
The course material is public (go-school on GitHub, in English). We delivered Go workshops in 2022 as part of international engagements.

Fits with

Sensible before:Architecture Modernization

After:Software Development

02
02

Kubernetes Operations

For teams already running a cluster or who have just inherited one: debugging, upgrades, RBAC and networking — on your own cluster, not on a sample app.

Audience
Ops, platform and development teams running Kubernetes in production, or about to take over operational responsibility. Including on-call rotations that so far could only escalate.
Prerequisites
  • A cluster every participant can access — managed or self-operated. We can provide a sandbox instead.
  • Linux and container basics, some prior exposure to kubectl
  • A namespace we are allowed to break on purpose
Duration
2 days, back to back or a week apart.
Outcomes
  • A systematic routine for pods that will not start, cannot be reached, or keep disappearing
  • Scheduling behaviour you can reason about: requests, limits, QoS classes, evictions — and why nodes fill up
  • Planned cluster and workload upgrades, including PodDisruptionBudgets and API deprecations
  • RBAC and network policies that are restrictive without blocking day-to-day work
  • Backup and restore rehearsed rather than merely documented
  • A first runbook draft for the incidents that hit you most often
Format
Hands-on on your own cluster: we break things, your team finds them. On-site or remote.
Group size
At most 10 participants, because each small group works in its own namespace.
Follow-up
Support through your first own on-call week, or a review of your runbooks a month later.
03
03

Platform Engineering Foundations

Before you build an internal platform: what belongs in it, what does not, and who owns it afterwards.

Audience
Engineering leads, architects, and the people asked to form or re-scope a platform team. No prior platform experience needed.
Prerequisites
  • You can describe how a change reaches production today — even if the path is ugly
  • At least one platform-side team and one team that will use the platform are in the room
  • No technical prerequisites
Duration
1 day.
Outcomes
  • The platform framed as a product: who its users are and how you measure their success
  • A golden path cut against one of your real services rather than an example
  • The line between self-service and ticket, drawn explicitly and justified
  • A deliberately small platform scope for the first six months
  • A prioritized backlog with a named owner per building block
Format
A whiteboard workshop, few slides. Considerably more effective on-site, because much of it is drawn together.
Group size
At most 12 participants. Larger rooms do not make decisions better, only longer.
Follow-up
A platform assessment of where you stand today, or guided delivery of the first golden path.
04
04

Cloud-Native Architecture

Two days on exactly one of your systems: which architecture holds up in the cloud, what it costs, and which migration path is realistic.

Audience
Architects and senior developers migrating an existing system or starting a new cloud-native one. Best attended together with whoever owns the budget.
Prerequisites
  • One concrete system — existing or planned — with its functional requirements
  • Current architecture and operations documentation, shared a week in advance
  • Known constraints: compliance, data residency, availability commitments, budget envelope
Duration
2 days.
Outcomes
  • Two to three architecture options for your system, weighed against each other rather than merely listed
  • State, data and failure domains cut cleanly — the decisions that get expensive later
  • A reasoned choice between re-platform, re-architect and deliberately not migrating
  • The cost drivers of the preferred option named before the first invoice arrives
  • A migration path in steps that can be delivered and reversed one at a time
Format
A working session on your system. We bring the questions and the comparison criteria, you bring the context.
Group size
At most 8 participants. Depth on a single system does not survive a large room.
Follow-up
A cloud-readiness assessment for the chosen option, or an architecture review once delivery starts.
05
05

GitOps Implementation

By the end, one real service runs through GitOps in a non-production environment — including secrets, environment promotion and a tested rollback.

Audience
Teams already deploying to Kubernetes who want to move from push pipelines to declarative delivery.
Prerequisites
  • A non-production Kubernetes cluster where we may install controllers
  • A Git repository and an existing CI pipeline that builds images
  • A real service we are allowed to migrate — not a hello-world
Duration
2 days.
Outcomes
  • Argo CD or Flux installed and connected to your repository
  • A repository structure that still holds at twenty services
  • Environment promotion without copy-and-paste between branches
  • Secrets managed declaratively, with no plaintext in Git
  • Drift and rollback triggered and observed, not just discussed
  • A named list of what is still missing before production
Format
An implementation workshop in your environment. We write it together, all of it stays with you.
Group size
At most 8 participants, because everyone works against the same environment.
Follow-up
Rolling out to the remaining services as a delivery engagement, or a review before going to production.
06
06

Architecture Decision Workshop

One open decision, one day, one written result. We facilitate and push back — you decide.

Audience
Teams stuck on one concrete decision: build or buy, splitting the monolith, changing the database, picking a cloud provider, replacing a framework.
Prerequisites
  • The decision is named up front and phrased as a question
  • The people allowed to decide are in the room all day
  • Context material and the arguments so far, shared a week in advance
Duration
1 day. Remotely as two half-days.
Outcomes
  • The options on the table, including the uncomfortable ones nobody has said out loud
  • Per option: assumptions, cost, risk, and how reversible it is
  • A decision taken — or one deliberately deferred, with a named trigger
  • An architecture decision record, written during the workshop rather than after it
  • Follow-up actions assigned with a name and a date
Format
A facilitated decision workshop. We bring the counter-arguments nobody internally wants to voice.
Group size
At most 8 participants. Anyone not part of the decision does not need to be in the room.
Follow-up
An architecture review once delivery has started, or delivery support for the first cut.

What a workshop costs

Price depends on duration, location and preparation, so there is no flat figure here. Tell us the format and the group size and you get a fixed-price offer, not a day-rate negotiation.

~/appetizer-labs/not-a-fit

When a workshop is not the right answer

Enablement does not work in every setting. These formats we deliberately do not offer — better said now than after the dates are booked.

  • Projects with no in-house engineering team

    Knowledge transfer is part of every engagement. With no team to hand over to it turns into permanent outsourcing — a model we do not offer.

  • Certification courses with an exam (CKA, CKAD, AWS)

    We do not do exam preparation. The formats work on your own cluster and your own code — what comes out is a system that runs, not a certificate.

  • Introductory training with no running system and no prior experience

    Every format assumes a running system and the prerequisites listed with it. For a first introduction there are better and cheaper providers.

  • Training for large groups, or a whole organization at once

    Group size is capped per format because the work happens on real code. A rollout across many teams in parallel does not fit that.

07
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Which format fits your team?

Tell us in a few sentences what you are aiming at. We will also say so when a workshop is the wrong instrument.

How a workshop enquiry runs

  • No sales call and no qualification screen. The first conversation is there to place the problem, not to close anything.
  • Scope is written down before implementation starts: the result, the boundaries, the estimated effort.
  • Knowledge transfer is part of the engagement: joint delivery, documentation in the repository, a handover at the end.
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