December 2018 Summaries

PagerDuty announced the opening of a new office in Atlanta, GA, in February 2019, with plans to hire up to 100 employees by the end of the year, reflecting its commitment to diversity and inclusion. The decision to expand in Atlanta was influenced by the city's diverse talent pool and alignment with PagerDuty's cultural values, as well as its status as a hub for tech talent and its competitive cost of living. The Atlanta office is expected to become a significant cross-functional hub within the company, eventually hosting over 300 employees. The presence of prestigious educational institutions like Georgia Tech, which graduates a high number of underrepresented minority degree holders and female software engineers, further supports the company's talent acquisition strategy. Atlanta's rich cultural diversity, music scene, and varied culinary offerings also make it an attractive location for employees, aligning with PagerDuty's focus on creating a vibrant and inclusive workplace environment.

AWS Security Hub, introduced at AWS re:Invent 2018, is a service designed to enhance security management for companies migrating to the cloud by providing a unified view of security event data from both AWS and third-party security tools. It integrates with AWS services like Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Macie, and Amazon Inspector, and allows for the incorporation of external security solutions, helping organizations maintain compliance and streamline their security operations. The integration with PagerDuty enhances the incident response process by enabling quick creation of incidents from identified security issues, facilitating efficient notification and response coordination among development and security teams. This integration, along with other new AWS integrations, aims to improve real-time operations by ensuring that potential security issues are promptly addressed, and is available for a free 14-day trial and purchase in the AWS Marketplace.

PagerDuty has enhanced its mobile app to support real-time incident management, enabling technical responders to triage and act on issues quickly from anywhere. The app now features live updates for real-time context, intelligent alert grouping to reduce noise, and a refreshed schedules experience for managing on-call responsibilities. For major incidents, the app allows tagging of incident priorities and advanced automation through response plays, facilitating cross-team coordination and task execution. Additionally, custom incident actions and capabilities like tapping to dial into bridges or join Slack channels streamline communication and resolution efforts. For business stakeholders, the newly introduced PagerDuty Visibility product provides a mobile-first dashboard offering real-time business impact metrics, ensuring that both technical and business teams can collaborate effectively on customer-impacting incidents. These updates reflect PagerDuty's commitment to mobile-first real-time operations, delivering critical insights and tools directly to users' hands.

For over two decades, the Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) has been at the forefront of utilizing information and communication technology to mitigate disaster risks and provide humanitarian aid globally, driven by the aftermath of Hurricane Iniki in 1992. The center developed DisasterAWARE, a comprehensive platform that aggregates real-time data on weather and disasters to support emergency management by organizations like the American Red Cross and the United Nations. This data is made accessible to the public through the Disaster Alert web platform and mobile app, offering critical information on risks and response strategies. The system's effectiveness hinges on its ability to deliver precise data quickly, a capability enhanced by PagerDuty, which has reduced IT incidents by 50%, ensuring timely alerts and interventions, as evidenced during Hurricane Lane. PDC's ongoing mission is to improve disaster preparedness by providing communities with timely information and resources, emphasizing the importance of information as a vital tool in disaster response and resilience. Mateo Manzari, PDC’s Director of Information Technology, oversees the management of these digital platforms, leveraging his extensive experience in IT to support the center's initiatives.

In a study inspired by "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy," PagerDuty's Digital Insights team developed an algorithm to quantify on-call pain experienced by responders, resulting in a health score ranging from 0 to 100. An average score of 71 or higher indicates a better chance of responders remaining at their companies for over 18 months, while scores below 71 suggest high levels of on-call pain, potentially leading to employee burnout and turnover. The study analyzed data from 10,000 PagerDuty customers and 760 million notifications, revealing the impact of on-call duties on personal life and work performance. By utilizing the Operations Health Management Service (OHMS), organizations can monitor health scores, identify employees at risk of burnout, and implement strategies to improve work-life balance and system stability, ultimately enhancing productivity and employee satisfaction.

PagerDuty's SRE team, dispersed across various time zones in the U.S. and Canada, has embraced virtual offsites as an effective alternative to their annual in-person gatherings, which are limited by logistical and financial constraints. A virtual offsite, conducted with the aid of laptops and online collaboration tools, allows for regular, focused discussions and planning from home, maintaining many benefits of in-person meetings. Key to a successful virtual offsite is thorough preparation, which includes gathering discussion topics in advance, scheduling effectively, and ensuring all team members attend remotely to avoid dominance by those physically present in a conference room. The use of collaborative tools like Trello and Google Docs enhances interactivity, while creative methods, such as using colorful hats and stars for communication cues, keep team members engaged. Although in-person offsites offer unmatched team bonding, virtual offsites have proven beneficial for team communication and planning, with PagerDuty's SRE team receiving positive feedback and tangible benefits from these events.