distributed: of systems and teams (ricon 2015 version)

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distributed: of systems and teams

Bridget Kromhout

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Bridget Kromhout lives: Minneapolis works: Pivotal podcasts: Arrested DevOps organizes: devopsdays

was: ops @ DramaFever, 8thBridge

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distributed systems free-association game

Images from Kyle Kingsbury’s Jepsen project

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CA

CP AP

AvailabilityConsistency

Partition Tolerance

“a partition is a time bound on communication.”

Eric Brewer

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tl;dr: distributed systems

are complex

let’s talk distributed teams

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I live nearly 2,000 miles from the Pivotal San Francisco office. (It’s probably definitely fine.)

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…especially as the whole team is distributed.

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distributed != remote

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The network is the computer.

the office.

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people > tools

choose: tools people will use

xkcd.com/1254/

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synchronous

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asynchronous

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Group chat: we use Slack

But anything you like works

If you all use it.

a slack haiku

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Pairing: state persists in RAM… write it to disk!

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“Durable communication exhibits the same characteristics as accidental, convenient communication in a co-located space. The powerful difference is how inclusive, transparent, and reliable it is.”

Casey West

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Lower-bandwidth communication: more handshaking

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Provide context.

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Let the team know when you’ll be unavailable.

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Remote-friendly is good for work/life balance.

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Tell the team what you’re doing.

(Nobody can see you’re working on slides.)

(Again.)

(Still.)

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Misunderstandings happen.

Over-communicate. It’s better than being hurt or angry for no reason.

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Be explicit about

actions & decisions.

Ask for help.

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Screencapping PDFs is the new emailing PDFs.

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Common Ground and Coordination in Joint Activity Klein, Feltovich, Bradshaw, Woods (2004)

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non-violent communication & emotional literacy

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examine assumptions

be explicit about guarantees

architect for failure

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distribute decision-making

(over)-communicate

resolve conflicts as they arise

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“There is no talent shortage.”

Andrew Clay Shafer

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what if distributed teams are a competitive advantage?

Images from Martin Fowler, “Remote versus Co-located Work”

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“Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.”

Mel Conway

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References1. Kyle Kingsbury, Jepsen project: aphyr.com/tags/Jepsen

2. Eric Brewer, “CAP Twelve Years Later: How the "Rules" Have Changed”: www.infoq.com/articles/cap-twelve-years-later-how-the-rules-have-changed

3. Casey West, “Durable Communication”: caseywest.com/durable-communication/

4. John Allspaw, “Blameless Portmortems and a Just Culture”: codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/

5. Klein, Feltovich, Bradshaw, Woods: “Common Ground and Coordination in Joint Activity”: jeffreymbradshaw.us/publications/Common_Ground_Single.pdf

6. Marshall B. Rosenberg,”Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life”: cnvc.org/nonviolent-communication-language-life-3rd-edition

7. Andrew Clay Shafer, “There is no talent shortage”: youtube.com/watch?v=P_sWGl7MzhU

8. Martin Fowler, “Remote versus Co-located Work”: martinfowler.com/articles/remote-or-co-located.html

9. Mel Conway, “Conway’s Law”: melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html

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Thank you.

Slides at bridgetkromhout.com/speaking/2015/ricon/