Prevent Heroism: How to Work Today to Reduce Work Tomorrow

A presentation at DevOps Austin Meetup in October 2020 in Austin, TX, USA by Quintessence Anx

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Prevent Heroism How to Work Today to Reduce Work Tomorrow Quintessence Anx Developer Advocate

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Inspiration for the talk QuintessenceAnx

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QuintessenceAnx

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QuintessenceAnx

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QuintessenceAnx

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QuintessenceAnx

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QuintessenceAnx

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QuintessenceAnx

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Defining Upstream QuintessenceAnx

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Upstream work is the proactive and preventative work that reduces the need for reactive, or downstream, work. QuintessenceAnx

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What does this look like for us? QuintessenceAnx

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Falling Downstream: The Angry SysAdmin QuintessenceAnx

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Has a lot of problems QuintessenceAnx

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Highly skilled QuintessenceAnx

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Asked Questions QuintessenceAnx

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Works Overtime QuintessenceAnx

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Customers want to meet them QuintessenceAnx

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Internal people want to meet them, too QuintessenceAnx

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Basically Brent QuintessenceAnx

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Result? QuintessenceAnx

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Stress – and a lot of it QuintessenceAnx

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Impact* of that stress?

  • Background: Shoemaker-Levy 9 + Jupiter QuintessenceAnx

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Current Events QuintessenceAnx

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Anger, Resentment, etc. QuintessenceAnx

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Strained Relationships QuintessenceAnx

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Time Management QuintessenceAnx

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Lack of Focus QuintessenceAnx

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Allostatic Load QuintessenceAnx

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Beyond Brent-A-Like: Business Implications QuintessenceAnx

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Diminishing Returns QuintessenceAnx

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Turnover QuintessenceAnx

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Reputation QuintessenceAnx

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Financial Performance QuintessenceAnx

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Done, but not. QuintessenceAnx

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No silos, no vacuums QuintessenceAnx

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Shift Left, Right, Front and Center QuintessenceAnx

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QuintessenceAnx

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Brainstorm the work QuintessenceAnx

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Determine which “stream” QuintessenceAnx

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Look for patterns QuintessenceAnx

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Switch to upstream mode QuintessenceAnx

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Short Term Long term Permanent Temporary QuintessenceAnx

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Plan & Prioritize QuintessenceAnx

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Do it ✔ QuintessenceAnx

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Iterate QuintessenceAnx

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QuintessenceAnx

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QuintessenceAnx

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But wait! How do I measure things? QuintessenceAnx

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Metrics, metrics, metrics QuintessenceAnx

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Now that you’re semantically saturated… QuintessenceAnx

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How do you measure upstream work? QuintessenceAnx

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Things to keep in mind: QuintessenceAnx

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Understand your needs QuintessenceAnx

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Learn how to measure them QuintessenceAnx

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Establish baselines QuintessenceAnx

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Know your capacity QuintessenceAnx

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Track your rate of change QuintessenceAnx

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Set your goals QuintessenceAnx

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Iterate QuintessenceAnx

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Use (some of) the same metrics, new perspective and application QuintessenceAnx

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Some example metrics to get started QuintessenceAnx

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Some Metrical Thoughts Service Level Agreement Compliance Change Failure Rate Question Volume Slack Keyword Mentions Unplanned Work Rate QuintessenceAnx

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Service Level Agreement Compliance QuintessenceAnx

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Change Failure Rate QuintessenceAnx

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Question Volume QuintessenceAnx

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Slack / Community Keyword Mentions QuintessenceAnx

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Unplanned Work Rate QuintessenceAnx

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Crash Course of this Crash Course QuintessenceAnx

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Upstream work is proactive, preventative work. QuintessenceAnx

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Downstream work is reactive work. QuintessenceAnx

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Upstream work reduces stress and its extended impact. QuintessenceAnx

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To shift, categorize your downstream work and reduce it. QuintessenceAnx

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Know what you need to ask and why. QuintessenceAnx

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Define success, quantify with metrics. QuintessenceAnx

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Slides & Additional Resources on Notist https://noti.st/quintessence QuintessenceAnx

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