Sensory Friendly Monitoring: Keeping the Noise Down

Sensory Friendly Monitoring Keep the Noise Down Quintessence Anx Developer Advocate

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Too much noise can • Bury important / high SEV alerts in a sea of low priority notifications • …causing teams to mute individual notifications or their sources. • …meaning that the people who needed to be notified, won’t be. QuintessenceAnx

Too much noise can • Bury important / high SEV alerts in a sea of low priority notifications • …causing teams to mute individual notifications or their sources. • …meaning that the people who needed to be notified, won’t be. QuintessenceAnx

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Reduce the noise by being aware • Determine the sources of noise • Categorize the types of noise • Channel the noise into a productive workflow • Create a routine to clear the clutter QuintessenceAnx

Your brain on alerts QuintessenceAnx

Cost: time and quality degradation QuintessenceAnx

Our brains are not meant to multitask QuintessenceAnx

Sources of noise QuintessenceAnx

How often do you… • …check your email? • …check your social media? • …check your text messages? • …check your Apple/Google messages? • …what about Google Home/Amazon Echo/etc.? • …the list goes on. All alerts are fictional. QuintessenceAnx

Communication & Boundaries • Set times to focus on work and mute non-critical alerts. • This includes messages from friends & family • Define “relevant emergency” • Set reasonable expectations for yourself and others. QuintessenceAnx

Communication & Boundaries • Set times to focus on work and mute non-critical alerts. • This includes messages from friends & family • Define “relevant emergency” • Set reasonable expectations for yourself and others. QuintessenceAnx

Categorize External Sources of Noise • False positives • False negatives • Fragility • Frequency QuintessenceAnx

Noise Flow • What needs to be known • Who needs to know it • How soon should they know • How should they be notified QuintessenceAnx

Re-Evaluate Redundancy How to add a little complexity to stop a vacuum a.k.a. A bad day in ChatOps QuintessenceAnx

Reliability & Redundancy • How reliable are your tools and services? • How much notification duplication is needed? • Can you switch alert endpoints in the event of a service outage? • Do you regularly evaluate the reliability of your services (internal and external)? QuintessenceAnx

For every alert triggered, ask • Was the notification needed? • How was the incident resolved? • Can the solution be automated? • Is the solution permanent? • How urgently is the solution needed? QuintessenceAnx

For every alert triggered, ask • Was the notification needed? • How was the incident resolved? • Can the solution be automated? • Is the solution permanent? • How urgently is the solution needed? QuintessenceAnx

Thank you! Quintessence Anx Developer Advocate 🥑 @ https://noti.st/quintessence QuintessenceAnx