As I get older, I find myself enjoying these types of stories less and less. My issue comes from the fact that nobody seems comfortable having a conversation about facts and data, instead resorting to childish analogies about turning knobs.
That’s not how our jobs work. We don’t “adjust a carefulness meter.” We make conscious choices day to day based on the work we’re doing and past experience. As an EM, I’d be very disappointed if the incident post mortem was reduced to “your team needs to be more careful.”
What I want from a post mortem is to know how we could prevent, detect or mitigate similar incidents in future and to make those changes to code or process. We then need to lean on data and experience of what the trade offs of those changes would be. Asking a test? Go for it. Adding extra layers of approval before shipping? I’ll need to see some very strong reasons for that.
That’s not how our jobs work. We don’t “adjust a carefulness meter.” We make conscious choices day to day based on the work we’re doing and past experience. As an EM, I’d be very disappointed if the incident post mortem was reduced to “your team needs to be more careful.”
What I want from a post mortem is to know how we could prevent, detect or mitigate similar incidents in future and to make those changes to code or process. We then need to lean on data and experience of what the trade offs of those changes would be. Asking a test? Go for it. Adding extra layers of approval before shipping? I’ll need to see some very strong reasons for that.