Ever had an incident that didn't go as planned? The culture amongst Ops, DevOps and SRE teams is critical to ensuring that your team is effective when things break. We've taken our years of collective experience and converted them into 5 easy to understand values that help teams move away from a hero-driven culture to a team based culture. Learn how to guide autonomous decisions and create a consistent culture between teams that you can easily apply and share with others.

1. Next-Level Incident
Management: Culture
Matters When Things Break
PATRICK HILL | SRE SOLUTIONS LEAD | @TOPOFTHEHILL

2. Culture

3. 78%of people don’t trust team mates
59%
say it’s poor
communication
29%
say it’s lack of
accountability

4. When @#$%
hits the fan,
we need to
trust each
other.

5. CultureProcess
Mandated standardized process
Centralized decision making
Lots of hierarchy and structure
Focus on outputs
Efficiency
Provide guides and guardrails
Empower decision making
Autonomy
Focus on outcomes
Effectiveness

6. Time
Number
of
Engineers

7. CultureProcess

8. CultureProcess
Documentation & Diagrams
Reports
Roles & Responsibilities

9. CultureProcess
Documentation & Diagrams
Reports
Roles & Responsibilities

10. Atlassian Values
They guide what we do, why we create, and who we hire.
Open company,
no bullshit
Build with heart
& balance
Be the change
you seek
Play,
as a team
Don’t #@!%
the customer

11. Certainty
Have a consistent process
and culture between teams
of how we identify, manage
and learn from incidents.
Goals
Relatedness
Align teams as to what
attitude they should be
bringing to each part of
incident identification,
resolution and reflection.
Autonomy
Guide autonomous decision-
making by people & teams in
incident and PIR situations

12. SCARF
Thanks David Rock!

13. Status
Certainty
Autonomy
Relatedness
Fairness

14. 5
cultural values for when
@#$% breaks
Detect
Atlassian knows before our customers do
Respond
Escalate, escalate, escalate
Recover
Sh!t happens, clean it up quickly
Learn
Always Blameless
Improve
Never have the same incident twice
1
2
3
4
5

15. Atlassian knows before our
customers do.
DETECT
1

16. If you’re not first, you’re last.

17. Good alerting
Have someone working on it before users see it.
Good communications
Inform users before they run into trouble.
Good monitoring
Detect problems before they impact users.
What this
value does
represent

18. Build with Heart
and Balance.
ATLASSIAN’S RELATED VALUE

19. Escalate, escalate, escalate.
RESPOND
2

20. Wake
people up
unless you
need them.
Ask for the
help you
need.
DO DON’T

21. We don’t need a hero

22. Play, as a team.
ATLASSIAN’S RELATED VALUE

23. Sh!t happens, clean it up
quickly.
RESOLVE
3

24. Customers don’t care about
you gathering diagnostics.

25. Source: https://howlingpixel.com/wiki/Flight_recorder

26. Don't !@#$ the
Customer
ATLASSIAN’S RELATED VALUE

27. Always Blameless
LEARN
4

29. Open Company,
No Bullsh!t
ATLASSIAN’S RELATED VALUE

30. Never have the same
incident twice.
IMPROVE
5

31. Be open ended
Ask open questions, ask what if, ask money is
not a problem
Follow-up
Make sure that actions get completed.
Ask how and why repeatedly
Really understand what caused this incident.Never have
the same
incident
twice.

32. Reinforcing the values
Each PIR asks about the values, and
whether this incident stood up.

33. Be the change
you seek
ATLASSIAN’S RELATED VALUE

34. 5
cultural values for
when @#$% breaks
Detect
Atlassian knows before our customers do
Respond
Escalate, escalate, escalate
Recover
Sh!t happens, clean it up quickly
Learn
Always Blameless
Improve
Never have the same incident twice
1
2
3
4
5

35. A few tips
for building your own culture!

36. Be authentic.
Be inclusive.
TIPS FOR YOUR OWN CULTURE

37. Involve people gradually
and get them to be
your promoters.
TIPS FOR YOUR OWN CULTURE

38. Understand and use the
SCARF model in your teams.
TIPS FOR YOUR OWN CULTURE

39. Reward the good behaviors.
TIPS FOR YOUR OWN CULTURE

40. 5
cultural values for when
@#$% breaks
Detect
Atlassian knows before our customers do
Respond
Escalate, escalate, escalate
Recover
Sh!t happens, clean it up quickly
Learn
Always Blameless
Improve
Never have the same incident twice
1
2
3
4
5

41. Thank you!
PATRICK HILL | SRE SOLUTIONS LEAD | @TOPOFTHEHILL