November 2023 Summaries

The text discusses the use of Sleuth to automate Jira ticket status updates. It explains that updating Jira tickets after code deployment can be time-consuming and annoying for both managers and developers. The Automation "Transition mentioned issues when a deploy ships to production" is introduced, which automatically updates issue statuses once code is shipped to the target environment. The author also mentions other potential automations for Jira tickets such as adding comments or requiring an issue key in PR titles and descriptions.

The text discusses a Slack-based approval process for shipping code faster, which has been beneficial for the Sleuth team in reducing lead time and deploying to production more quickly. Developers can approve production deploys from within Slack by using a thumbs-up emoji 👍. This process involves three steps: setting up a build with a manual approval step, installing an Automation to enable Slack-based approvals, and optionally installing another Automation for automated approvals. The text also highlights the importance of health checks before automatically shipping code from staging to production as part of proper continuous deployment practices.

The text discusses strategies and tools used by a team to achieve "PR Zero," or having very few open pull requests. They accomplished this through encouraging smaller pull requests, reaching developers directly when reviews are critical, and celebrating progress towards PR Zero in Slack using Sleuth Automations. These automations help improve the efficiency of code review processes, reduce waiting time for developers, and promote better quality code by ensuring smaller batch sizes. The team also uses a daily summary of open pull requests to encourage prompt action on them.

The text discusses how to use Pull Request (PR) checks in the context of engineering automation. It explains that PR checks are a form of guardrails that enforce agreements between engineers on work standards and practices. These checks can be implemented using tools like Sleuth, which automatically flags violations of PR standards. The impact of these checks can be tracked through metrics provided by Sleuth. Using PR checks is beneficial as it notifies developers immediately about violations, reducing the need for constant reminders from team leads or other developers. The text also mentions that more PR checks are being added to their Automations Marketplace regularly.