How Intercom’s Data Infrastructure team met growing demand with solid principles

The Intercom Data Infrastructure team was facing growing demand due to the company's rapid growth, leading to a tipping point where they struggled with minor issues and had too much context switching. To address this, the team established principles to align their work, focusing on deliverability and quality over speed. They applied these principles to three main problems: prioritizing speed over problem-solving, knowledge silos, and under-prioritization of system health. By adopting "do less, better," pairing up engineers on projects, and making system health a top priority, the team was able to improve their efficiency, reduce context switching, and increase overall quality of work.