What I learned leading Ops at GitHub, Heroku, DigitalOcean, and more

Mark Imbriaco @markimbriaco

Lessons From the Bleeding EdgeWhat I learned leading Ops at GitHub, Heroku, DigitalOcean, and more...

Mark [email protected]


• Building and operating Internet services for over 20 years.

• TechOps leadership at 37signals, Heroku, LivingSocial, GitHub, and DigitalOcean.

• Founder of Operable.• Frequently opinionated.

Who am I?


#PDSummit16Mark Imbriaco @markimbriaco


Break large decisions into smaller decisions whenever you can. Not only is it easier to make small decisions, it's also easier to change them when you find out you're wrong.

Make tiny decisions.


Engineers have a hard time leaving problems unsolved, but there are always more problems. Push back and enforce healthy balance.

Fight hero culture.



If you haven't practiced your plan, you don't have a plan. Build deliberate practice and feedback mechanisms into your processes to increases confidence when working under stress.

Practice makes perfect.


Be prescriptive where possible to allow people to focus on the areas where they provide the most value.

Don't make me think.


Learn from both successes and failures. Learning reviews should be a habit, not an opportunity for assigning blame.

Make it safe to learn.


• Apologize. And mean it.• Demonstrate a thorough understanding of

the problem.• Explain what you're doing to reduce the

likelihood of similar problems. Don't over promise.

... and share the results publicly.



Go the extra mile to understand the problems that your internal customers have and demonstrate that you understand them, especially when you have to say no.

Empathy is a core value.



Design collaboration into your processes. Make sharing the default and bias toward visibility. Remember, visibility is the ultimate compensating control.

Collaborate by default.


If you're building a web tool, enlist help from a friendly designer. If all else fails, pick a UI framework like Bootstrap and fake it. A little bit of visual design goes a long way.

Ops tools don't have to be ugly.



Celebrate your wins and share in the celebration of others to build a virtuous cycle of forward progress. And remember, shipping isn't just for software.

Build a culture of shipping.



Big design up front does not work well in software. Processes are no different. Be flexible, adaptable, and constantly apply what you learn.

Do the simplest thing that could work.


Beware the illusion of agreement and be explicit. Make sure that your hard won knowledge is shared across your entire organization and deliberately considered in new projects.

Close the feedback loop.


If you're interested in ChatOps and have security or audit requirements, I'd love to talk to you.

Mark [email protected]

Thanks!

Software

What I learned leading Ops at GitHub, Heroku, DigitalOcean, and more