January 2018 Summaries

In 2017, numerous major outages highlighted the importance of conducting postmortems to learn from incidents and improve service stability. While traditional postmortems focus on understanding the root causes and immediate fixes, there is an additional layer of assessing long-term service health that is often overlooked. Effective postmortems should not only capture specific action items but also identify broader trends and potential vulnerabilities to prioritize large-scale improvements. At PagerDuty, engineering teams are encouraged to evaluate and communicate their service's ongoing stability, integrating insights into organizational planning. By addressing both immediate and systemic issues, and ensuring transparency in reporting, organizations can better anticipate and mitigate future incidents, ultimately improving service reliability and reducing the frequency and impact of outages.

PagerDuty Co-founder Alex Solomon, in a recent interview, recounted the origins of the company alongside his fellow co-founders Andrew Miklas and Baskar Puvanathasan, inspired by his experience at Amazon during a significant transition from a monolithic to a micro-services-based architecture. This shift required engineers to become more accountable for their code, leading to the concept of "pager duty," where they would be on call to address issues arising from their work. Additionally, Solomon discussed his decision to step down as CEO to facilitate the company's growth and scalability as it expanded and considered a potential IPO, acknowledging his lack of experience at that level of operational scale.

The exploration of VoiceOps for PagerDuty aims to integrate voice interaction into digital operations management, leveraging scenarios such as War Time, Skirmish Time, and Peace Time to assess its effectiveness. While VoiceOps shows potential for minor incident responses during Skirmish Time and assists managers during Peace Time by providing easy access to system status, it is not yet fully reliable for critical War Time situations due to limitations in voice recognition technology. The project, led by UX designer Corinna Sherman and software engineer Zayna Shahzad, involved creating a prototype with Google Assistant and PagerDuty API, tested during a hack event with the Actions on Google community. Despite its promising prospects, VoiceOps needs improvements in voice interaction accuracy and user trust to become more widely adopted in emergency response scenarios.

PagerDuty, Crunchbase, and SaaStr have launched the Inclusion for Impact Awards to recognize women executives who have significantly contributed to diversity and inclusion within the tech industry in 2017. The awards aim to celebrate leaders who have been instrumental in driving positive change through leadership, innovation, and ethical influence in their professional spheres. The awards encompass four categories: The Change Agent, which honors leaders driving diversity and equality; The Influencer, which celebrates those who balance business success with ethical influence; The Fearless Female Founder, recognizing female entrepreneurs overcoming adversity; and The Inclusion Innovators, highlighting organizations demonstrating genuine commitment to diversity through actions and results. Winners will be announced at the SaaStr 2017 Diversity Party and will receive a $500 donation to a charitable organization of their choice.

The Sailboat Retrospective is an Agile technique that uses the metaphor of a sailboat journey to help teams identify factors that propel them forward, such as favorable winds, and obstacles that slow them down, like anchors and rocks. This method involves visualizing the team as a sailboat navigating towards a goal while encountering potential risks and challenges. The process is divided into four steps: setting the stage by creating a visual board with categories like sunshine, anchors, and obstacles; brainstorming to generate ideas about what supports or hinders progress; gathering data by grouping related ideas and discussing them; and deciding on actionable steps to enhance positive elements and mitigate risks. The technique, as adapted and used at PagerDuty, has proven effective by incorporating adjustments to fit team dynamics, emphasizing the importance of collaboration in refining Agile processes.

PagerDuty's engineering culture is built on empowering teams, encouraging innovation through Hack Days, and fostering collaboration with Tribes and Guilds. Teams at PagerDuty are self-organizing, with end-to-end ownership of their projects and a "you code it, you own it" approach, supported by Agile methodologies like Scrum and Kanban. Innovation is driven by monthly Hack Days, where engineers can experiment freely, though it's noted that this approach may not suit all projects, particularly those critical to infrastructure. Collaboration is enhanced by Tribes, which align teams with shared goals, and Guilds, which facilitate knowledge sharing among those with common interests. The organization emphasizes the need for a balance between team autonomy and leadership guidance while maintaining a fun and inclusive environment to ensure the longevity of its engineering culture.

Virtual Summit UK is an upcoming event designed to equip attendees with the skills and insights necessary for successful digital transformation, featuring a diverse lineup of speakers from companies like AWS, Intuit, and Dropbox. The two-day event, starting on January 23, offers two tracks catering to a range of roles from executives to developers, allowing participants to personalize their agendas. Notable sessions include a presentation by Rachel Watson from Sky Betting on optimizing team autonomy and scalability using technologies like PagerDuty, and a fireside chat with Amy Harms from Deliveroo discussing the integration of DevOps and effective incident management within the company. Attendees will gain access to all sessions, allowing them to focus on topics that align with their specific industry or role.

The text discusses various strategies to enhance the experience of on-call workers, highlighting the importance of providing context, learning from incidents, managing expectations, and showing appreciation. It emphasizes the need for accessible historical information to avoid wasting time during outages, and suggests tools like PagerDuty for alert grouping and postmortem analysis. The text also stresses the importance of reviewing alerts regularly to prevent the normalization of deviance and encourages a culture of learning from failures. Managing customer expectations is crucial, and metrics should be tied to business outcomes rather than arbitrary standards. The text advocates for personalized gestures of appreciation, such as baking treats, to acknowledge the efforts of on-call staff. It also suggests adjusting alert policies based on the time of day to reduce unnecessary disruptions for on-call engineers.

Virtual Summit is an upcoming online event scheduled for January 23, offering participants the opportunity to explore innovative operations practices and digital transformation strategies. The summit features two main content tracks, providing a range of sessions from technical insights to leadership best practices, presented by industry leaders and experts from companies like AWS, Intuit, and Slack. Attendees can benefit from on-demand access to these sessions, allowing them to tailor their experience according to their professional interests and schedules. This format ensures that participants can learn from top-tier experts and gain knowledge applicable to improving their business operations and customer experiences at their own pace.

PagerDuty experienced significant growth and numerous milestones in 2017, including opening new offices in London and Sydney, being featured in Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 and Forbes' Cloud 100 lists, and processing a substantial amount of data through its platform. The company focused on making life easier for its users by efficiently managing billions of events and incidents, while also enhancing accessibility through various devices. Additionally, PagerDuty emphasized its commitment to giving back to local communities and supporting diversity and inclusion in tech. The year was marked by the launch of a new developer community, hosting Breakathons, and conducting a Summit Series in multiple cities. Above all, PagerDuty expressed gratitude to its users, highlighting their role in its success and engaging with them through popular merchandise and community interactions.

DevOps started as a cultural movement and has evolved to incorporate tactical practices, with culture remaining a central, yet challenging, component. It's essential for organizations to deliberately create a culture that aligns with their objectives to avoid organic, undesirable cultures such as those driven by fear or silos. Effective DevOps culture is characterized by stewardship rather than dictation, sharing of wins, smaller teams, and shared objectives. Leadership plays a crucial role in fostering this environment by ensuring that all team members are aligned in their goals, which helps prevent conflicts between development and operations teams. While culture may seem subjective, it is vital for sustaining an efficient DevOps environment, and once established, it becomes self-sustaining. Organizations that successfully develop a DevOps culture can achieve faster, higher-quality software releases that contribute positively to their bottom line.