4 ms·

> Create a culture that favors begging forgiveness (and reversing decisions quickly) rather than asking permission. Invest in infrastructure such as progressive

> Create a culture that favors begging forgiveness (and reversing decisions quickly) rather than asking permission. Invest in infrastructure such as progressive / cancellable rollouts. What a terrible idea. How do you make sure no one breaks the product on friday evening? Especially with non-reversible db mgirations or other funky things?

marginalia_nu 3y ago
Create a culture where you don't deploy directly to prod on friday?
intelVISA 3y ago
Create a culture where you bikeshed instead of shipping?
marcosdumay 3y ago
How do you make sure the gate-keepers don't do exactly that? Because gate-keepers also fail once in a while. And the same things that help deal with their failures can also be applied directly to deal with failures from the developers. It's a robust and very counterintuitive finding that quality verification of human processes do not increase the final quality. You still need quality control, but people will adjust for any universal checking you add to their work.
datadrivenangel 3y ago
Create a culture where people are good at what they do and don't break things on a Friday.
SkyPuncher 3y ago
It’s pretty easy when the people who break stuff also need to fix it. Nobody wants to ship on a Friday just for the sake of shipping. They just wait until Monday.
ac50hz 3y ago
Promote a culture of responsibility, and attach responsibility to every person, every decision and every action.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  lol then watch the knives come out, and over the smallest thing. there is a limit
  - ac50hz 3y ago
    ;-) Yeah, I do get that, but when there's no promotion of personal responsibility, chaos reigns. When everyone does wat they want to do, or what they think is necessary, nothing is completed. This is from experience with different companies, organizations, teams, projects, people. Of course, nothing is perfect, but without some structure, there is only communication mayhem ;-(
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
part of creating such a culture is getting rid of the fuckwits. "we can't allow them to deploy to the QA environment without written approval because what if they deploy to production on a friday!?!?". said no one ever.
- RamblingCTO 3y ago
  I'd love that. And I'd love employees who take ownership and have a vision of more than a meter. Truth is, as a startup that nobody knows (stealth mode) in a tough financial market you're not attractive in Germany (and it's ridiculously competitive already). I hope it get's better with more public visibility.
zoogeny 3y ago
I think it partially depends on what you are willing to forgive. For example, I am much more willing to forgive eagerness compared to carelessness or impatience. One thing to consider is that moving to a culture of "permissiveness" won't stop carelessness. In fact, it helps to embed it. People learn that they can offload being careful onto the one giving permission. Over time this leads to a worse situation since you end up having a lot of people who feel it is OK for them to be careless and you end up with one person (the one who can give permission) bearing the entire weight of carefulness for the entire org.
- RamblingCTO 3y ago
  Point taken! I have yet to find a path to distributed ownership in my team, but I lack the right resources imho. Can't go into detail, but we have special issues that are probably not widely shared in other startups.

marginalia_nu 3y ago

Create a culture where you don't deploy directly to prod on friday?

intelVISA 3y ago

Create a culture where you bikeshed instead of shipping?

marcosdumay 3y ago

How do you make sure the gate-keepers don't do exactly that? Because gate-keepers also fail once in a while. And the same things that help deal with their failures can also be applied directly to deal with failures from the developers. It's a robust and very counterintuitive finding that quality verification of human processes do not increase the final quality. You still need quality control, but people will adjust for any universal checking you add to their work.

datadrivenangel 3y ago

Create a culture where people are good at what they do and don't break things on a Friday.

SkyPuncher 3y ago

It’s pretty easy when the people who break stuff also need to fix it. Nobody wants to ship on a Friday just for the sake of shipping. They just wait until Monday.

ac50hz 3y ago

Promote a culture of responsibility, and attach responsibility to every person, every decision and every action.

red-iron-pine 3y ago
lol then watch the knives come out, and over the smallest thing. there is a limit
- ac50hz 3y ago
  ;-) Yeah, I do get that, but when there's no promotion of personal responsibility, chaos reigns. When everyone does wat they want to do, or what they think is necessary, nothing is completed. This is from experience with different companies, organizations, teams, projects, people. Of course, nothing is perfect, but without some structure, there is only communication mayhem ;-(

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

part of creating such a culture is getting rid of the fuckwits. "we can't allow them to deploy to the QA environment without written approval because what if they deploy to production on a friday!?!?". said no one ever.

RamblingCTO 3y ago
I'd love that. And I'd love employees who take ownership and have a vision of more than a meter. Truth is, as a startup that nobody knows (stealth mode) in a tough financial market you're not attractive in Germany (and it's ridiculously competitive already). I hope it get's better with more public visibility.

zoogeny 3y ago

I think it partially depends on what you are willing to forgive. For example, I am much more willing to forgive eagerness compared to carelessness or impatience. One thing to consider is that moving to a culture of "permissiveness" won't stop carelessness. In fact, it helps to embed it. People learn that they can offload being careful onto the one giving permission. Over time this leads to a worse situation since you end up having a lot of people who feel it is OK for them to be careless and you end up with one person (the one who can give permission) bearing the entire weight of carefulness for the entire org.

RamblingCTO 3y ago
Point taken! I have yet to find a path to distributed ownership in my team, but I lack the right resources imho. Can't go into detail, but we have special issues that are probably not widely shared in other startups.