DevOps Days Denmark 2023
Failure is not an Option
Ixchel Ruiz, JFrog
DevOps Days Denmark 2023
Failure is not an Option
It’s a Fact
Ixchel Ruiz, JFrog
Me
“HUMAN writing code for HUMANS to
improve HUMAN life”
Agent Smith — Matrix
“Never send a HUMAN to do a
MACHINE’S job ”
Failure
Takotsubo
Broken heart syndrome
We should aim for
perfection
Jon Bowers
The unexpected
bene
f
it of
celebrating failure
Astro Teller
Project Level
Failure in “IT”
Why Your IT Project
May Be Riskier
Than
You Think
Bent Flyvbjerg
and Alexander Budzier
2011
Bent Flyvbjerg and Alexander Budzier
New research shows surprisingly high numbers of
out-of-control tech projects—ones that can sink
entire companies and careers.
IT change initiatives
It’s that an unusually large proportion of IT change
initiatives incur massive overages.
“Fully 1 in 6 of the projects
was a black swan, with a
cost overrun of 200%.
On average, a schedule
overrun of almost 70%”
The Empirical
Reality of IT Project
Cost Overruns:
Discovering A Power-
Law Distribution
Bent Flyvbjerg
and Alexander Budzier
2022
Bent Flyvbjerg and Alexander Budzier
Disastrous IT projects are not the outliers they are
sometimes interpreted
Bent Flyvbjerg and Alexander Budzier
The key point that can be drawn here is that
substantial overruns in IT projects may result from
interdependencies.
A closer look
Failure in “IT”
Testing
Tests
Spock Reports
Security
In-Depth Analysis of Open
Source Security
Vulnerabilities Most
Impactful to DevOps and
DevSecOps Teams
2023 JFrog Security Research
Report
2023 JFrog Security Research Report
“The majority of vulnerabilities detailed
in this report were not as easy to exploit”
2023 JFrog Security Research Report
“Many of them required complex con
f
iguration
scenarios or speci
f
ic conditions under which an
attack could be successfully executed.”
2023 JFrog Security Research Report
“Considering the context in which software is
deployed and utilized when evaluating the
impact of any CVE.”
Failure! Failure! Failure!!
The Failure Issue
Harvard Business Review
April 2011
Nature of failure
Not all failures are created
equally
Failure
Types
Preventable
Complexity-related
Intelligent
Preventable
Preventable failures
“ Most failures in this category can indeed be considered “bad”
They usually involve deviations from speci
f
ications in the closely
de
f
ined processes of high-volume or routine operations in
manufacturing and services “
“MACHINE’S job ”
Complexity-related
Complexity-related
“ A large number of organisational failures are due to the
inherent uncertainty of work: A particular combination of
needs, people, and problems may have never occurred before ”
Intelligent
Intelligent
“Failures in this category can rightly be considered “good,” because
they provide valuable new knowledge that can help an organization
leap ahead of the competition and ensure its future growth”
Learning Process
How failure size
affects learning in
innovation
DRUID15
Process
“Failure identi
f
ication, Failure analysis, and
deliberate experimentation."
Failure identi
fi
cation
“Recognising small failures from a complex system”
Failure analysis
“Process of understanding the cause of the failure
and extracting lessons to avoid future failure”
Deliberate experiment
“Design solution experiments to experience failure
early in a safe and controlled setting.”
How fast we learn
The tipping point between
Failure and Success
The tipping point between
Failure and Success
The Tipping Point
Between Failure
and Success
Yian Yin and
Yang Wang
Below the tipping point : stagnation region
Not learning enough to actually achieve success.
Above the tipping point
People fail over and over but they get to fail faster
and faster to eventually approach success.
Increase the return on failure
Increase your
return on Failure
Julian Birkinshaw and Martine
Haas
Increase return
Steps
Learn from every Failure
Share the lessons
Review your pattern of failure
Psychological Safety,
Trust, and Learning
in Organizations: A
Group-level Lens
Amy C. Edmondson
Psychological safety
A climate in which people are comfortable being (and
expressing) themselves.
Coming back
Failure in “DevOps”
SDLC
Preventable
Complexity-related
Intelligent
JFrog Artifactory: The database of DevOps
Single source of truth
Consolidate & Enhance data
Distribute Knowledge
Security
Best practices
Curation
Failure is not an option
Failure is not an option
Failure is not an option
Failure is not an option
Failure is not an option
Failure is not an option
Failure is not an option
Failure is not an option
Failure is not an option
Failure is not an option
Failure is not an option

Failure is not an option