Knowledge Sharing > Tools

Andy Domeier

Twitter - @ajdomie

This #DOTGT thing is super cool

Quick Intro

• 10.5 Years @SPSCommerce

– 80 something to 1,000 something

– New Company Every Year

• About me

– Work should be fun & rewarding

– Building Awesome is fun

– Just got back from #velocityconf #tired

*Disclaimer*

I came here today thinking I know something about some things… I expect to leave here thinking I have no clue about anything

*Fine Print – is fine print still a thing?

2014 DevOps Days Chicago

• Who Sets Your Priorities?

• I thought I knew what I was talking about!

Perspective…..

My Point Was…

• Shouldn’t we clean the roads first?

• Stop the Truck!

• Priorities Conflict Everyday

Then Open Spaces Happened

Open Space….Turned Tools?

• What if there isn’t a pitchfork on the truck?

• What if the toolbox is locked?

• What if the tools on the truck are confusing?

What I Heard

1. We don’t have the right tools to collaborate preventing me from feeling empathetic

1. We don’t have access to the tool

1. We don’t share knowledge about the tool

If I had a tool (that I understood)

• I could help us better

• I could understand the problem better

• I could help us be more awesome

Tools are More

“When used properly Technology Tools can enable teams, multiple teams or entire organizations to speak the same language about something complex”

Who Likes Tools?

Not Enough?

Do you have too many?

Don’t Move!!!

Having the right tools

Oh Yeah, and…...

Let’s Face the Facts

These Tools make us better and we should use them. (In some cases we need to use them)

Choose (Mostly) Wisely

“Picking the right tool is less important than how you use it which is even less important than how you enable others to use it”

Organize!!

• Today’s world is complex, there is no one size fits all tools out there. Results = Lots of Tools

• Leverage Documentation as an organizer & enabler

– It should not be an all knowing answer giver

Documentation

“Documentation is NOT a CYA, it is a critical media for sharing knowledge so we can be collectively smarter…”

You know what you know….You don’t know what you don’t know....

You know what you assume others know....

Knowledge Assessment

“Our Time is too valuable to spend it manually greppingour coworkers brains!”

Conversely this is your time if you don’t share

knowledge

Unlock the Door

• Encourage the general culture to be curious

Fail Fast and Iterate

Fail Fast & Iterate

Q: How can we make an environment like this effective?

A: Knowledge Sharing is Critical

Expectations of Knowledge

• Everyone thinks differently and organizes differently so be considerate

• It’s not ever going to be perfect, have an expectation what you need might not be there

– But leave it in a better state than you found it!

The Approach we Take• “SysMain” – The landing page for a service

– Template• Description• Diagrams• Monitoring (& SOPs)• Service Dashboards (The Tools)• Dependencies• How to manually validate it’s working• How to restart it• Integrations – Bugs, Change Tickets, Sprints

Links, Links, Links

It’s Blank!

Believe in Team #cheesy

Documentation may not exist due to “reasons”

Things are the way they are..

• Unless you’re Dr. Brown you might as well worry about moving forward and trust you’re in this state for “reasons”

Transparency via Knowledgebase

• Blog Posts

• Short, informative, quick links, labeled (lives forever)

Examples of putting this all together

Example 1: Collaborating & Iterating

Dev was Curious

New Build full of Logs

Life Was Good

Months Later: Life Was Bad

Example 1Using the metrics in the logs from the previous build, Summarized DB query time over 30 days

Example 1

• But why the spike?

– SysMains use integration to list changes for those services

Example 1

• John pings DBA + Dev Manager + Lead Dev + Me =

Example 1

Example 1 – 1 Year Ago• This would have been a customer ticket• Escalated to Dev as a UX issue• Dev would have sent it back and asked why• Ops would say, cuz…. Reasons• Dev would look closer at magic and decide it was

DB perf• Transfer ticket to DBA• Meanwhile.....

Example 2: Collaborating & Iterating

Performance Test Sets- Configurable- Documented

Automation- 6 Months Later- Scheduled Job

Trends & Analytics- Automated Logging KPIs- Pushed KPIs to Analytics - Easily Dashboard

DoD MSP 2015 – Software Game

• Decrease Friction

• Lower Risk

• Situational Awareness

#winning

http://www.devopsdays.org/events/2015-minneapolis/proposals/The%20New%20New%20Software%20Development%20Game/

Consider

“Documentation is a way to automate knowledge sharing and a team that effectively shares knowledge will excel in empathy, collaboration, and iteration”

#winning

Ponder

• Aligning and incentivizing an organization is not a perfect science, it’s constantly changing.

– This is not a problem you solve for, it’s a problem you manage.

Do This….

• Be Continuous #VelocityConf– Continuous Deployments = Continuous Conversation

– Continuous Integration = Continuous Learning

*Warning – I believe a byproduct of this is being awesome…

• How you work with other teams and the expectations or commitments you make

– Is your expectation best intentions?

– Are your best intentions trusted??

Be Aware

Thank You!

I hope you thought this was as I cool as I did… if you did or didn’t let me know!

Twitter-@ajdomie