$30 off During Our Annual Pro Sale. View Details »

Failure and the Third Way - Aaron Blythe, DevOpsDays Chicago 2019

Failure and the Third Way - Aaron Blythe, DevOpsDays Chicago 2019

From The Phoenix Project there are three ways. This short talk is about the all important third way, which focuses on continual improvement and taking risks.

The Third Way is about creating a culture that fosters two things: continual experimentation, taking risks and learning from failure; and understanding that repetition and practice is the prerequisite to mastery. In operations we often focus on “keeping the lights on”.

We all have Technical Debt. Technical Debt has to be paid down. But which projects should we focus on? We have to start by identifying our constraints. By focusing on our constraints we can prioritize not only the work that we release, but also the technical debt projects that should be worked. These projects are a great place to introduce the idea of a safe place to fail and iterating based on whether the desired outcome is met.

DevOpsDays Chicago

August 28, 2019
Tweet

More Decks by DevOpsDays Chicago

Other Decks in Technology

Transcript

  1. @ablythe
    1.
    2.
    3.
    Flow
    Feedback

    View Slide

  2. @ablythe

    View Slide

  3. View Slide

  4. @ablythe
    Learn
    Blame
    Choose One

    View Slide

  5. @ablythe
    Retributive Culture .
    Which rule was broken?
    How bad was the outcome?
    What should the consequences be?

    View Slide

  6. @ablythe
    Restorative Culture .
    Who is hurt?
    What are their needs?
    Whose obligation is it to meet
    those needs?

    View Slide

  7. @ablythe
    Sidney Dekker - Just Culture

    View Slide

  8. @ablythe
    Retributive Culture
    You pay or settle
    account
    Backward-looking
    accountability
    Who is responsible?
    Restorative Culture
    You tell account
    Forward-looking
    accountability
    What is
    responsible?

    View Slide

  9. @ablythe
    Make it safe to fail

    View Slide

  10. @ablythe
    Dev Ops
    (Business) (Customers)
    First Way: Flow
    (System Thinking)

    View Slide

  11. @ablythe
    Dev Ops
    (Business) (Customers)
    Second Way: Feedback

    View Slide

  12. @ablythe
    Dev Ops
    (Business) (Customers)
    Third Way: Culture of
    Continuous Learning

    View Slide

  13. @ablythe

    View Slide

  14. @ablythe
    “… massive outage…
    It was caused by,
    quite frankly, a
    dumb mistake. In
    fact by an engineer
    who had taken
    down Netflix twice
    in the last 18
    months…”

    View Slide

  15. @ablythe
    “… in the same 18
    months that
    engineer moved …
    … forward
    not by miles but by
    light years.”

    View Slide

  16. @ablythe
    What happens when it is not
    safe to fail?
    Hiding
    Secrecy
    Evasion
    Self-protecting
    Finger-pointing
    REPETITION of ERRORS

    View Slide

  17. @ablythe

    View Slide

  18. @ablythe
    Sharp
    End
    Blunt
    End
    Management/
    Policy
    Individual
    Failure

    View Slide

  19. @ablythe
    “… building a high
    trust culture is likely
    the largest management
    challenge of this
    decade.”
    –Gene Kim

    View Slide

  20. View Slide