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Presented at Learning Postmortems Together Lunch LT
This article is a follow-up to the event How Have We Responded to Incidents? Learning Postmortems Together Lunch LT held on 2023/02/09.
You can see the reactions on Twitter during the presentation here: How Have We Responded to Incidents? Learning Postmortems Together Lunch LT #LT_findy - Togetter
Additionally, it seems that if you register with Findy, you can watch the archived video. Here are my presentation slides.
"We've Started Postmortems"
by ThreeShake Inc. nwiizo (@nwiizo)
We've Started Postmortems - Speaker Deck
This was an introductory session by nwiizo, who opened the LT session, explaining what a postmortem is.
While quoting the Google SRE book, which can be called the original source, they explained what they value in an easy-to-understand manner over about 10 minutes. I think it made the subsequent LTs go very smoothly!
"Culture and Technology Supporting Postmortem Operations"
by Recruit Co., Ltd. Takeshi Kondo (@chaspy_)
Culture and Technology Supporting Postmortem Operations - Speaker Deck
In this LT session, chaspy, who specifically started the postmortem culture at Recruit, spoke about things like "taking the lead in writing them myself to help postmortems take root" and how "the postmortem template quotes the SRE book, but there has been almost no need to update it until now." It was very insightful to hear such first-hand accounts that can only be shared now that the practice has been introduced and established!
"All for One Postmortem Operations and Techniques"
by Mercari, Inc. Kuu🍣 (@Fumiya_Kume)
All for One Postmortem Operations and Techniques - Speaker Deck
In this LT session, similar to chaspy from Recruit, specific details about overall incident response at Mercari were shared. For example, I was able to hear about creating dedicated Slack channels when a failure occurs and improving efficiency by introducing tools like Blameless. An interesting point was that creating postmortems is explicitly stated as an Ownership item in their Engineering Ladder. As mentioned during the presentation and in the title, it was very interesting to see how all engineers, not just SREs, are focusing on postmortems!
"Postmortem as a textbook"
by LINE Corporation maru (@maruloop)
Postmortem as a textbook - Speaker Deck
Finally, I presented from LINE about quality improvement methods to utilize postmortems as educational materials. Specifically, I discussed how SREs facilitate review meetings and the consideration of follow-up tasks that developers write in postmortems. I focused on the points I kept in mind when designing these meetings, such as the challenges, how to conduct the meetings, and what to be conscious of.
Summary...
During this LT event, I suddenly remembered the saying, "Water flows to lower ground; people flow toward the path of least resistance."
Nowadays, this phrase is often used as a warning not to drift in an easy direction. However, in the original Mencius, flowing downward was viewed positively; the idea was that it is not in human nature to have one's flow forced in a different direction by external pressure. The human nature mentioned here refers to the theory that humans are fundamentally good, implying that people are basically good but may occasionally do bad things due to external pressure.
Also, speaking of water, there is a saying in Laozi, "The highest excellence is like water." Water is treated as the supreme good because it provides blessings to all things without discrimination, does not force its way, and remains in its natural state.
What I felt was common across all the LT sessions in this event were points such as "not forcing people" and "creating systems that allow people to act that way naturally."
Just as "water flows to lower ground," I felt the event was packed with the "How-To" of setting up mechanisms and incentives so that engineers naturally write postmortems to improve service reliability.
Thank you to everyone at Findy for planning and organizing this event!
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