phildiniIt's time for another rousing edition of "Phildini Livetoots Talks Already Given"
Today: @ryancheley's #DjangoConUS2024 talk: "Error Culture"
YouTube
Error Culture or "What the heck are all these emails for anyway?"
Important to start with "What is an alert?"
A warning or error with the intention of prompting action.
We're going to be assuming "alerts over email" for this talk.
We're going to talk about what Error Culture is, how to know if you're in it, and how to get out of it.
Error Culture is accepting error notifications and ignoring them, promoting reactive firefighting instead of prevention.
Where does it come from?
- Lack of understanding on what, why, and who in regards to the error
- Error / Alert fatigue
- Hero culture
Error Culture happens to people across the company, and across industries
How do you know if you're in it?
- Is your deleted emails full of alerts you didn't even read?
- Do you have a rule that auto-deletes emails?
- Do you get alerts and have no idea what to do with them?
- Are people rewarded for waiting until problems are "big enough" to alert others or solve them?
So how do we fix Error Culture?
- First, don't take down a fence unless you know what it was put up
- Start by asking questions
- Delete the alert, but not just the email, remove the alert mechanism (if the team agrees it's still important)
- Is the alert actionable? Actionable alerts have Verbs.
- Are the right people being notified?
- First, don't take down a fence unless you know what it was put up
- Start by asking questions
- Delete the alert, but not just the email, remove the alert mechanism (if the team agrees it's still important)
- Is the alert actionable? Actionable alerts have Verbs.
- Are the right people being notified?
And that wraps the main talk, now time for questions!
"What should we do about performance errors?"
Set thresholds, and stick to them
"What about regular alerts that are 90% nothing and 10% bad that cause fatigue?"
Try to document the reasons behind the alert and link to them from the alert so people understand them better. Communication with the team is critical.
And that's a full wrap! Thank you for joining this #SlowpokeLiveToots of @ryancheley's #DjangoConUS2024 talk.
If you liked this thread, the best way to support me is supporting the #OpenData non-profit @civicband at https://opencollective.com/civicband
