Increasing the bus
factor
Charlotte Godley @charwarz
Slide 2
Slide 2 text
What’s the bus factor?
Slide 3
Slide 3 text
whoami
Software Engineer @getdotmesh // Breaker of Kubernetes clusters
charlottegodley.co.uk
@charwarz on Twitter // Godley on github.
Slide 4
Slide 4 text
Onboarding myself
★ Started in an infrastructure team february of last year
★ Previous experience embedded systems up to desktop apps
★ During my interview I asked “what is a container?”
Slide 5
Slide 5 text
My team had history
-
Slide 6
Slide 6 text
We owned many, many things.
Slide 7
Slide 7 text
How did this happen?
Slide 8
Slide 8 text
Too few owning too much
Slide 9
Slide 9 text
Attrition
Slide 10
Slide 10 text
Company Reorganisations
Slide 11
Slide 11 text
Bleeding edge, complex tooling
Slide 12
Slide 12 text
Fix it! Fix it!
Slide 13
Slide 13 text
Collect some data.
★ Assess how many things your team owns
★ Ask who would be willing to handle calls for those things
★ Repeat every few months.
Slide 14
Slide 14 text
Improving the data...
Anyone supporting teams
Slide 15
Slide 15 text
Direct your support work so that everyone
can see it.
Slide 16
Slide 16 text
More slack channels is always the answer.
Slide 17
Slide 17 text
...but it can also cause more problems.
Slide 18
Slide 18 text
Reduce the load
“Nine women cannot make a baby in one month”
Fred Brooks, 1975
Slide 19
Slide 19 text
Survey users, and share the results.
Slide 20
Slide 20 text
Deprioritise tools which are used by low
amounts of people
Slide 21
Slide 21 text
Encourage shared learning initiatives
Slide 22
Slide 22 text
“The people who know the most about the
systems at your company are very likely the
busiest.”
Sean Cassidy
Slide 23
Slide 23 text
Introduce first line/second line support rotas
Slide 24
Slide 24 text
Write case studies
Slide 25
Slide 25 text
# Title
**First symptom:**
**Root cause:**
**Steps:**
1. Ran x command, noticed this
2. Ran y command
**Final remarks:**
Slide 26
Slide 26 text
Be patient and kind to users
Slide 27
Slide 27 text
Grumpiness does not scale.
Slide 28
Slide 28 text
1. People will thank you
Slide 29
Slide 29 text
2. They will leave you to it.
Slide 30
Slide 30 text
3. They will help answer other people’s
questions and requests.
Slide 31
Slide 31 text
Build up useful tooling & websites
Slide 32
Slide 32 text
Encourage contributions from others
Slide 33
Slide 33 text
1. Good unit tests.
Slide 34
Slide 34 text
2. Patience.
Slide 35
Slide 35 text
3. Communication.
Slide 36
Slide 36 text
Summary
Slide 37
Slide 37 text
Thanks :)
charlottegodley.co.uk
@charwarz on Twitter // Godley on github.