Shaun Abram
Technology and Leadership Blog
Subscribe to RSS FeedWhy to avoid Mean Time to Recover (MTTR)
The 2022 Void Report came out in late 2022, It is a recommended read, and I previously summarized it here. This article focuses on one aspect of the report: why mean time to recover (MTTR) is not an appropriate metric for complex software systems.
The takeaway are:
- Do track time to recover (TTR) for each incident. It can be a useful exercise to think about when an incident started and stopped. That can help when calculating the cost of an incident.
- Don’t report those times in aggregate, such as MTTR. Systems fail in non-uniform ways and averaging numbers to represent their reliability (or the performance of the supporting teams) is likely to be misleading.
- Instead, use:
- Post-incident learning reviews to learn (and share!) everything you can from an incident
- SLOs to help align technical system metrics with business objectives
- Consider sociotechnical incident data too
Tags: accelerate, dora, incidents, mttr, reliability, sitereliabilityengineering, sre, voidreport
Summary: The SPACE of Developer Productivity
The SPACE of Developer Productivity is a 2021 paper by researchers at GitHub, University of Victoria, and Microsoft (including Dr Nicole Forsgren, co-author of Accelerate) that looks into ways to measure and predict productivity for both individuals and teams.
The following is a summary of the paper. The original is ~5400 words. This is ~2000.
Tags: developerproductivity, metrics, productivity, summary
Blog post summary: What test coverage means by John Gluck
In this What QA Wolf means by “test coverage” post, the author John Gluck starts with a simple definition of test coverage, discusses what tests to write and how, and ultimately cautions against using coverage targets as an end goal.
Tags: integrationtesting, summary, unittesting
Leadership lessons from our road infrastructure investments
I loved this article in the Washington Post. It is ostensibly about how “We fixed I-95 in 12 days”, and “lessons for U.S. infrastructure”, but I think it is really invaluable lessons about leadership in general…
Tags: i95, infrastructure, leadership, management
Blog post summary: Accountability in Software Development by Kent Beck
A summary of Accountability in Software Development, by Kent Beck
Tags: accountability, kentbeck, summary
Blog post summary: Quality Assurance is Not About Testing
The following is a summary of Quality Assurance is Not About Testing by Matt Lievertz. I have also incorporated some elements of his earlier The Death of the Non-Coding QA Role post too.
Tags: qa, quality, summary, Testing
Software Laws
Some “laws” that are particularly relevant in software development…
Tags: conwayslaw, goodhartslaw, hofstadterslaw, laws, parkinsonslaw
2022 VOID Report Summary
The following is a summary of the 2022 VOID report.
The original is ~10,000 words. This is ~1500.
Tags: incidents, summary, voidreport
PivotTables in Excel
A basic introduction to creating Pivot tables in Excel.
Tags: dataanalysis, excel, microsoft, pivottable
Amazon Kindle publisher’s copy limit
One of my favorite ways to read technical and leadership books is on my laptop, where I copy, paste, and summarize (I do this so much, I described a bit more in summaries).
One problem is that I often do this reading in the Kindle app and after a certain number of copy & pastes, I get this:
“You have reached the publisher’s copy limit set for this title.”
And it stops my writing in its tracks.
Here are a few workarounds…
Tags: amazon, books, calibre, drm, kindle
2022 Books
A short review of some of the books I read in 2022…
Tags: 2022, bookreviews, books, reading
Sublime notes
The following are some notes & examples of using Sublime Text for quick text editing, typically using regular expressions.
Your team is not a democracy
TLDR: During a difficult team discussion, holding an impromptu vote to resolve the issue is rarely the right move. Trust your team but, as the manager, you may have critical information that your team does not and you are ultimately responsible. It is OK to make decisions that go against the majority view.
Imagine you are a manager on a team. The team is debating a thorny issue. There is disagreement on the best way to move forward and someone suggests putting it to a vote. As the manager, should you let the majority decide?
My own personal take is that as a manager, putting it to a vote is rarely the right move.
It is certainly your duty to stimulate debate. Encourage everyone to speak up, and ensure anyone who can’t seem to get a word in is given space. You should challenge the team into creative and out-of-the box thinking.
Ultimately you, as the leader of the team, need to make the call however. Why?
Tags: developmentmanager, devmanager, engineeringmanager, leadership, management
Shift Left
Defining the term shift left to mean testing earlier in the development cycle feels antiquated since waiting until development is “complete” before testing is a plain ol’ anti-pattern at this point.
A better definition could be testing earlier and more frequently. Writing tests each sprint, and running those tests with every commit.
Perhaps better still is thinking of shift left as a movement of testing to earlier in the pipeline. Favor unit tests, which typically run in the pipeline first and fast. Heavier-weight tests, such as UI based and end-to-end tests, which are typically harder to write, slower to run, and run later in the pipeline, do have a place but should be used sparingly.
Another way to look at this is that shift left means shifting down the testing pyramid.
Tags: deliverypipeline, quality, shiftleft, Testing, unittesting
ThoughtWorks Technology Radar v26
The latest, 26th, Tech Radar version from the folks at ThoughtWorks is now available.
As usual, it covers a range of technologies across 4 categories (Platforms, Techniques, Languages & Frameworks, Tools), rated on a scale of:
- Adopt: Strongly recommend
- Trial: Worth pursuing
- Assess: Worth understanding
- Hold: Proceed with caution
I’ve picked out some of the things I found most useful/interesting/relevant for me below, but I recommend checking it out in full at thoughtworks.com/radar.
(more…)Tags: radar, techradar, thoughtworks, thoughtworkstechradar