Failure Is An Option

Presented at Velocity Santa Clara 2015: http://velocityconf.com/devops-web-performance-2015/public/schedule/detail/41680

Despite our best efforts, we fail. From bugs to delivery failures, product planning problems to complex system failures, even the most experienced people in our industry are accustomed to failure. If we accept that failure is indeed inevitable, and embrace it rather than rail against it, how does that change our approach to work?

I’ll begin by talking about failure and its ensuing and varied costs, and compare our instinctive reactions (slow down) and Etsy’s approach (trust and speed), and what we’ve learned along the way.

I’ll cover the advantages of keeping things fast, and how we use technology to help us do that (and stay that way), and also what we do when things do go wrong (as they inevitably will).

I won’t present a one-size-fits-all Royal Road to Safety, because there isn’t one. Instead, I’ll aim to kickstart conversations you can have with your colleagues about your organisation’s attitude to risk, and what changes you might want to make to cope with your own future failures.

Transcript

1. FAILURE is an option IAN MALPASS · @indec etsy
2. three TRUTHS
3. you will create BUGS
4. you will build the WRONG THING
5. you will not foresee the UNEXPECTED
6. failure has a COST
7. MONEY
8. TIME
9. DATA
10. CUSTOMERS
11. CREDIBILITY
12. failure is INEVITABLE
13. expensive failure is NOT
14. no BARRIERS
15. just
 SPEED
16. just
 TRUST
17. FLEXIBILITY
18. DEPLOY DEPLOY DEPLOY DEPLOY DEPLOY
20. small CHUNKS
21. code
 REVIEWS
23. roll FORWARD
24. manual TESTING
25. call SECURITY
26. automated TESTING
27. no FLAKING
28. TRY
 (try again)
30. saved by the
 PRINCESS
31. watch the GRAPHS
33. watch the LOGS
34. DARK
35. feature FLAGS
36. testing the 1%
37. testing the 2%
38. testing the 10%
39. testing the 50%
40. testing the 100%
41. MINIMUM-ISH viable product
42. STAFF testing
43. PROTOTYPE
44. A/B testing
45. expect the UNEXPECTED
46. PARTIAL failure
47. we still FAIL
48. BLAMELESS
49. LEARN from failure
50. FRANK analysis
51. CELEBRATION
53. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
54. push the ENVELOPE
56. over to YOU
57. QUESTIONS?