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SRE and Organizational Transformation: Lessons from Activist Organizers

In the software industry’s recent past, the biggest disruptive wave was Agile methodologies. While Site Reliability Engineering is still early in its adoption, those of us who experienced the disruptive transformation of Agile see the writing on the wall: SRE will impact everyone.

Any kind of major transformation like this requires a change in culture, which is a catch-all term for changing people’s principles and behaviors. As your organization grows, this will extend beyond product and engineering. At some point you also need to convince the key power-holders in your organization to invest in this transformation.

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Engineers, Stop Hoarding Your Metrics

Metrics are the golden ticket to knowing what’s going on with your system… or so everyone thinks. But there can be too much of a good thing. Are your metrics really doing you any favors? Are they letting you see into what your customers truly want from you? If not, you might have a problem. You might be fetishizing your metrics. The good news is you’re definitely not alone

Like The Hobbit’s dragon Smaug laying on his pile of gold, never spending and only hoarding, many of us often stockpile pretty, feel-good, but useless metrics that never make a difference. In fact, they could actually be clouding your ability to get the context and clarity you need from your metrics. In this blog post, we'll help you kick your fetish and move away from Smaug-ing up all your metrics.