These slides discuss why database professionals, and other operations people in technology firms require training on human factors, crew resource management and other key safety elements of airline operation today.
Topics include our dysfunctional relationship to automation (and how to fix it), as well as understanding why people make mistakes and making the human factor debuggable.
1. Chris Travers
What What Database Professionals, Devops and
Others Can Learn from Flight Safety
2. About Me
I have around twenty four years of experience with PostgreSQL and databases in many
roles – developer, database hacker, dba, and more. I love PostgreSQL’s versatility.
I have also been around IT operations most of this whole time. I have worked as a
sysadmin, devops engineer, and platform engineer.
6. A brief history of Human Factors in Aviation
▶ Human error vs Pilot Error
▶ Individual responsibility vs collective responsibility
▶ The Tenerife Disaster and the Dutch Report
▶ David Beaty’s Contributions
8. Automation Paradox
▶ Automation isn’t always the answer!
▶ Automation can make human error more likely
▶ Expectation Bias is a real problem
▶ Some examples.....
9. Good automation
▶ Deliberate decision points built in
▶ Built around the human
▶ Careful attention to feedback
▶ Easily integrated into a checklist
10. Why we make mistakes
▶ Built-in biases (confirmation, continuation, etc)
▶ Reversion to prior behavior under stress
▶ Fatigue
▶ Missed details due to overload
11. How to debug the human
▶ Need a good taxonomy of error types
▶ Need a good understanding of cognitive biases
▶ Social factors (coming up!)
▶ Contextualize the person
13. The ideal role of human operators
▶ Decision-makers
▶ Good situation awareness
▶ To do this we need to be capable and well rested!
14. Recommendations
▶ Bring in aviation trainers for crew resource management with experience training
other industries
▶ Build our own inhouse programs to support this going forward
▶ Need the organizational commitment to make it better
15. Roadmap for Implementation
1. Get organizational commitment
2. Bring in trainers and train both operators and management
3. Develop a core team of people to give recurring trainings and trainings to new
hires.
4. Include human error findings in post mortem reports wherever appropriate
16. Conclusions
▶ We treat human error the way airlines treated pilot error in the 1950s.
▶ Our industry has a lot to learn
▶ Great improvements in reliability, performance, and even efficiency are possible
17. Thanks to
▶ Adjust GmbH for where I got this experience
▶ Delivery Hero, for helping me solidify some of my thinking on this topic
▶ Vettabase for inviting me to give this talk here
