Incidents & Operations with Dan Slimmon

Software Delivery in Small Batches

In this episode, Adam welcomes Dan Slimmon, an experienced Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) to discuss aspects of incident response and troubleshooting in software engineering. Dan explains his methodology for clinical troubleshooting, the importance of maintaining a common mental model, and techniques for leading effective incident response efforts. They also delve into the value of continuous ops reviews and ongoing mental model updates to prevent issues, emphasizing the need for structured processes and effective communication.

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Chapters

• (00:00) - Incidents & Operations
• (01:14) - Guest Welcome
• (01:40) - Dan's Career Journey
• (02:33) - Evolution of Tech Stacks
• (04:59) - Clinical Troubleshooting Explained
• (11:53) - Incident Response Fundamentals
• (17:41) - Effective Communication in Incidents
• (26:09) - Training for Incident Response
• (33:22) - The Essence of Incident Response
• (33:53) - Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Fixes
• (35:01) - The Firefighting Analogy in Software Incidents
• (37:11) - Postmortems: Learning from Incidents
• (42:14) - Building a Shared Mental Model
• (42:41) - Looking for Trouble: Proactive System Monitoring
• (47:59) - Ops Reviews: Continuous Improvement
• (54:37) - The Importance of Closing the Feedback Loop
• (59:40) - Final Thoughts and Resources

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