Platform Engineering: It's Not About Control, It's About Collaboration

In today’s fast-paced world of software development, speed and consistency are crucial for competitive advantage. Platform engineering has emerged as a powerful paradigm to help organizations achieve this. However, some misunderstandings persist. It’s often misconceived that platform engineering equates to centralized control and imposing rigid restrictions. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The Heart of Platform Engineering: Developer Enablement At its core, platform engineering is about empowering product development teams....

February 27, 2024

Tailoring Reliability Practices to Your Organization's Unique Context

While Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) emerged from Google’s approach to managing large-scale systems, it’s crucial to remember that it’s not a rigid, one-size-fits-all solution. Google operates at a scale and complexity that most other companies don’t encounter. Therefore, successfully adopting SRE requires careful adaptation to the specific challenges and realities of your organization. Understanding the Importance of Context In the world of software engineering and operations, context is vital. Here’s why your organization’s specific context matters:...

February 26, 2024

Postmortems: A Tool for Learning, Not Shaming

When something goes wrong in tech - a website crashes, a system fails, a project deadline whooshes past - it’s natural to want to understand what happened and why. However tempting it may be to find someone to hold accountable, that instinct undermines one of the most powerful tools in a tech team’s arsenal: the postmortem. What is a Postmortem? A postmortem (literally, “after death”) in the tech world is a detailed review of an incident or failure....

February 23, 2024

Platform Engineering: Enhancer of DevOps, Not a Replacement

As tech buzzwords go, “platform engineering” has definitely gained momentum. I see it everywhere - in articles, conference talks, and even casual conversations among tech professionals. Too often, though, this concept of platform engineering comes bundled with the tagline “DevOps is dead” or “Platform engineering replaces DevOps.” This makes me cringe a little inside. Every time I hear this, it reinforces my conviction that folks making such statements fundamentally misunderstand the core of what DevOps represents....

February 22, 2024

The Problem with 9's

The pursuit of ever-increasing “9’s” in reliability metrics has become a hallmark of modern systems engineering. But for senior decision-makers, it’s critical to look beyond the marketing appeal of abstract numbers and assess the real-world trade-offs and potential pitfalls of fixating on this single metric. Understanding the 9’s Scale While seemingly straightforward, the implications of each additional “9” are less apparent to non-technical stakeholders. Let’s demystify it: 99% uptime: Approximately 3....

February 21, 2024