Gamifying Operational Excellence
TheService Score Card
1 The Problem
3 A Solution tour
4 The results
5 Take aways & lessons Learnt & Questions
2 A Solution idea
Agenda
“If it's not broken, I’ll fix it.”
From Australia, on loan as
Staff SRE @ linkedIn
jobs, companies, recruiter
& Finder of encoding bugs
about meDanny ☃ Lawrence
“If it's not broken, I’ll fix it.”
From Australia, on loan as
Staff SRE @ linkedIn
jobs, companies, recruiter
& Finder of encoding bugs
about meDanny ☃ Lawrence
“If it's not broken, I’ll fix it.”
From Australia, on loan as
Staff SRE @ linkedIn
jobs, companies, recruiter
& Finder of encoding bugs
about meDanny ☃ Lawrence
“If it's not broken, I’ll fix it.”
From Australia, on loan as
Staff SRE @ linkedIn
jobs, companies, recruiter
& Finder of encoding bugs
about meDanny ☃ Lawrence
“If it's not broken, I’ll fix it.”
From Australia, on loan as
Staff SRE @ linkedIn
jobs, companies, recruiter
& Finder of encoding bugs
about meDanny ☃ Lawrence
Good news SRECON.
You passed the ☃ test.
about meDanny ☃ Lawrence
Some terms(before we really get started)
Operational Excellenceeffective and efficient delivery of information, technology, and services required by end users
that add measurable value.
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Gamifying Operational Excellence
Operational ExcellenceDoing everything required to make sure
all of your services are as fast and as reliable as possible.
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Gamificationapplication of game-design elements and game
principles in non-game contexts.
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Some background(LinkedIn SRE crash course)
Mostly JavaMultitudes of services
Doing lots of thingsService-oriented architectureEverything talks to everything
My direct team looks after 80+ servicesWe have 200+ SREs
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LinkedIn SRE Crash Course
The Problem(What started this whole thing)
Problem 1:The GOOD
& The BAD
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BAD serviceswake me up
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GOOD serviceslet me sleep
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What makes a GOOD service at LinkedIn is a moving target.
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Technologies and dependencies change
over time.
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Upgrading dependencies & libraries Java / Jetty / Play / Tomcat
Correct usage of TLSSwitching databases / caches
Migrate from SVN to GITReduce application startup time
Setup error budgetingTrue up the number of metrics
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Some examples
A GOOD service can turn into a BAD service.
If you are not checking it
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UnfortunatelyBAD services
do not magically turn into
GOOD services23
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Problem 2:Knowing what is BAD
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Problem 3:Knowing why it’s BAD
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Problem 4:Tribal knowledge
about how to get to GOOD
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The only thing we appear to hate more than not having documentation,
...Is writing documentation.
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The Problemsummary
BAD services wake me upTime will cause GOOD to turn BAD
Hard to know what is BADHard to know why is BAD
Not sure how to fix the BAD
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The Service ScoreCard(A solution)
In order determine the healthof the services we support,
we define a list of production requirements.
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Apply a weight to each requirement
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Codify each requirement into a check.
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Execute these checksfor each service
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Service Scorecard
Tally up the results for service.
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Grade the service from“F” to “A+”
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Add all the services into a highscore system
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Then
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Publish those scores to the company
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This is great, but how do I improve the score?
How can I add X check into the system.
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What makes a check?
checks are one type of plugin.
fetch plugins gather datacheck plugins check the data.
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We use the fetch plugin to gather remote data from:
SVN, GIT, Configuration DBs,host databases, monitoring systems, build systems, deployment systems.
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Basically,if we can fetch it,
then we do so.
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We build a giant context object.
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The check plugin will look at our context object.
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All plugins are small python scripts,where small is 10~30 LOC
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Simply return 2 or 3 things.
state*: True, False, None or 0.0 - 1.0message*: short stringdata: python dict of interesting things.
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Example fetch plugin
@ssc.tags(“ownership”)def fetch_ownership(service_name): “Fetch all the ownership data of a service”
o = r.get(“http://owners/” + service_name)
return True, “gathered data”, o.json()
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@ssc.tags(“ownership”)def fetch_ownership(service_name): “Fetch all the ownership data of a service”
o = r.get(“http://owners/” + service_name)
return True, “gathered data”, o.json()
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@ssc.tags(“ownership”)def fetch_ownership(service_name): “Fetch all the ownership data of a service”
o = r.get(“http://owners/” + service_name)
return True, “gathered data”, o.json()
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@ssc.tags(“ownership”)def fetch_ownership(service_name): “Fetch all the ownership data of a service”
o = r.get(“http://owners/” + service_name)
return True, “gathered data”, o.json()
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@ssc.tags(“ownership”)def fetch_ownership(service_name): “Fetch all the ownership data of a service”
o = r.get(“http://owners/” + service_name)
return True, “gathered owner data”, o.json()
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Example check plugin
@ssc.weight(5)@ssc.tags(‘ownership’)@ssc.wiki(‘http://wiki/ssc_eng_owner’)def check_eng_team(ctx): “ensure ENG ownership of a service”
if ctx.ownership.eng_team: return True, ctx.ownership.eng_team return False, “missing eng_team”
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@ssc.weight(5)@ssc.tags(‘ownership’)@ssc.wiki(‘http://wiki/ssc_eng_owner’)def check_eng_team(ctx): “ensure ENG ownership of a service”
if ctx.ownership.eng_team: return True, ctx.ownership.eng_team return False, “missing eng_team”
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@ssc.weight(5)@ssc.tags(‘ownership’)@ssc.wiki(‘http://wiki/ssc_eng_owner’)def check_eng_team(ctx): “ensure ENG ownership of a service”
if ctx.ownership.eng_team: return True, ctx.ownership.eng_team return False, “missing eng_team”
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@ssc.weight(5)@ssc.tags(‘ownership’)@ssc.wiki(‘http://wiki/ssc_eng_owner’)def check_eng_team(ctx): “ensure ENG ownership of a service”
if ctx.ownership.eng_team: return True, ctx.ownership.eng_team return False, “missing eng_team”
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@ssc.weight(5)@ssc.tags(‘ownership’)@ssc.wiki(‘http://wiki/ssc_eng_owner’)def check_eng_team(ctx): “ensure ENG ownership of a service”
if ctx.ownership.eng_team: return True, ctx.ownership.eng_team return False, “missing eng_team”
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@ssc.weight(5)@ssc.tags(‘ownership’)@ssc.wiki(‘http://wiki/ssc_eng_owner’)def check_eng_team(ctx): “ensure ENG ownership of a service”
if ctx.ownership.eng_team: return True, ctx.ownership.eng_team return False, “missing eng_team”
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@ssc.weight(5)@ssc.tags(‘ownership’)@ssc.wiki(‘http://wiki/ssc_eng_owner’)def check_eng_team(ctx): “ensure ENG ownership of a service”
if ctx.ownership.eng_team: return True, ctx.ownership.eng_team return False, “missing eng_team”
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Putting it all together
Problems
Understanding what is BADKnowing why it is BAD
Not sure how to fix the BAD
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Problems
Understanding what is BAD
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
Problems
Understanding what is BADKnowing why it is BAD
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Service Scorecard
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Service Scorecard
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Problems
Understanding what is BADKnowing why it is BAD
Not sure how to fix the BAD
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What is the check?Why is it important?
How long it will take to fix?How will it be fixed?
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AngularJSimage: CC BY 4.0 https://angular.io/presskit.html (2017)
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{{service_name}}becomes
jobs-server
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{{context.ownership.eng_owner}}becomesjobs-team
Using our fetched data in the wiki
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{{service_name}}
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var query = $location.search();
var service_name = query[‘service_name’];
var url = ‘http://ssc/api/’ + service_name;
$http.get().success(
function(ctx) {
$scope.ctx = ctx;
}
);
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var query = $location.search();
var service_name = query[‘service_name’];
var url = ‘http://ssc/api/’ + service_name;
$http.get().success(
function(ctx) {
$scope.ctx = ctx;
}
);
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var query = $location.search();
var service_name = query[‘service_name’];
var url = ‘http://ssc/api/’ + service_name;
$http.get().success(
function(ctx) {
$scope.ctx = ctx;
}
);
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var query = $location.search();
var service_name = query[‘service_name’];
var url = ‘http://ssc/api/’ + service_name;
$http.get().success(
function(ctx) {
$scope.ctx = ctx;
}
);
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var query = $location.search();
var service_name = query[‘service_name’];
var url = ‘http://ssc/api/’ + service_name;
$http.get().success(
function(ctx) {
$scope.ctx = data;
}
);
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var query = $location.search();
var service_name = query[‘service_name’];
var url = ‘http://ssc/api/’ + service_name;
$http.get().success(
function(ctx) {
$scope.ctx = ctx;
}
);
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{{ctx.ownership.owner_eng}}
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{{ctx.ownership.owner_eng}}
{{ctx.number_of_hosts}}
{{ctx.product.lib.jetty.version}}
{{ctx.hosts.hostnames}}
{{ctx.is_deployed_in_prod}}
{{ctx.commits.last_commit}}
Problems
Understanding what is BADKnowing why it is BAD
Not sure how to fix the BAD
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Now
Reports show what is BADChecks validate why it is BADWiki shows how to fix the BAD
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No more of these emails
“If you use a lib-core, then upgrade it, we found a bug”
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How many of my 80 services use this lib?How do I check?
How do I upgrade?
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Where does this tool fit?
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pre-commit Build Deployment Monitoring
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pre-commit Build Deployment Monitoring
Service Scorecard
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pre-commit Build Deployment Monitoring
Service Scorecard
API
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Service Scorecard
API
hack-days Reporting Deployment Monitoring
Results &
Outcomes
What we do with the scores?
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Priority #1:Getting the grades better
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When we started Now
Average grade for my team 40% 80%
Average score across SRE 35% 60%
Checks in 24 hours 15,560 89,859
Number of checks per service 15 31
Center the source to page, and align to bottom of page number. Do not increase in size, and keep on one line.
Gamifying Operational Excellence
We can now explore news ways to use the scores
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Carrot&
Stick
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Carrot / GOOD
Stick / BAD
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No SRE supportfor
F Gradeservices.
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F Grade services generally cause the
most problems.
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No deploy moratorium for
A+ services
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A+ services generally cause the
least problems.
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A servicesare allowed to deploy 24/7
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Premium SRE support for A+ services
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Priority build queuesfor
GOODServices.
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Tiger teams to raise the scores on
F Grade services
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Hack Days
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FREE BEER
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Basically any problem can be solve with
FREE BEER
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OR T-Shirts
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/
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Influence where we allocate open headcount
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Simple way to get things done
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Take aways&
Lessons Learnt
Everyone cares about Reliability.
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Everyone cares about Reliability,
Everyone is a Site Reliability Engineer.
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Everyone cares about Reliability,
You just need to empower them.
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Hack Days are important,
This POC was built in an afternoon.
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Getting the data was easy,
Finding interesting ways to use it is hard.
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Make it as easy as possible to do the right thing.
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Cheers !
Q & A
