I’ve been playing with an idea based mostly on anecdotal evidence: At some point, the external dependencies which our systems rely on become so tightly coupled, large, and fundamental that should those foundations inevitably fail, that blame can actually go down in response to an incident. A blanket statement applicable to any system feels egregious, but I’m confident enough to… Read more →
Blame awareness only works if you work towards blame awareness with all incidents, not just the ones that affect yo Read more →
We often talk about blame aware culture. Your teams are continuously working towards building a system where, among many goals, a safe and reliable system is available. When we’re surprised, incidents happen. As we’re working towards safety, and by definition these incidents are surprises, shaming folks for failure is counterproductive and instead we should celebrate the opportunity to learn more.… Read more →
One of the fallacies about our collective approach to retrospectives, incident reviews, and post mortems is the belief that the entire process is a rational machine. Pour in a curated series of events, turn the handle, and out pop all of the action items that need completing to fix the world. I can’t speak to every industry that practices Resilience… Read more →
Deploying code on a Friday is a hot button topic that pops up in tech every few months, setting twitter and the like ablaze with passionate discourse in both directions. “It’s too risky to on call folks”, “no, it’s perfectly fine if you build your systems right” and so on. This is me adding fuel to that fire. Some first… Read more →
Coming back from SREcon 19 Americas in Brooklyn (catch up with Tanya Reilly’s conf report) and Chaos Community Day 19 in Manhattan (Nora Jones’ Chaos Engineering Traps), Resilience Engineering has had my full attention lately. I’m thoroughly encouraged to see so many folks interested in it and speakers from many different companies contributing their shared experiences to a field that… Read more →
This post on error budgets should be considered fluid, ideas worked in and out as any good beliefs should. My experiences with error budgets are not universal and should not be assumed as decrying anyone who has had success using them. I strongly welcome thoughtful, critical feedback and assume best intent from anyone who disagrees. I’m not a fan of… Read more →