Why slow rollouts beat clever ones
March 14 · 9 min read
Every incident I have taken part in shared one property: something changed faster than anyone could observe it. The fix is rarely a better tool — it is a smaller step.
Essays on systems, infrastructure and doing careful work.
Every incident I have taken part in shared one property: something changed faster than anyone could observe it. The fix is rarely a better tool — it is a smaller step.
Start with the data, not the entry point. Structures outlive functions, and they tell you what the author actually believed about the problem.
A panel that shows everything shows nothing. We removed two thirds of our charts and, for the first time in a year, noticed a regression on the day it shipped.
Two commands, once a month, on a spare machine. That is the whole discipline, and almost nobody keeps it.
The document is not for the reader. It is for you, six months from now, when the context has quietly evaporated.