This blog post tackles how to implement core Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles even if you don't have a dedicated SRE team. It simplifies complex SRE concepts like error budgets, SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs, making them understandable for beginners.

The blog post offers a step-by-step guide to get you started with SRE, including:

Defining what matters to your customers (SLIs)

Setting achievable targets for those metrics (SLOs)

Considering how much downtime you can afford (error budgets)

Identifying and automating repetitive tasks (toil)

Implementing ways to easily rollback deployments if necessary

Prioritizing team well-being to avoid burnout

Maintaining open communication to set realistic expectations

Overall, the blog emphasizes that SRE is a gradual process that can significantly improve your system's reliability and provide a better customer experience.

This blog post explains how to conduct valuable incident postmortems to improve your incident response process. Incident postmortems are reviews done after an incident to understand what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again.

The key points are:

Incident postmortems should focus on understanding the root cause (how) of the incident, not just what happened.

Hold regular postmortems, even for minor incidents.

Use data to guide your discussion and identify trends.

Appoint a neutral facilitator to lead the discussion.

Create a safe space where everyone feels comfortable sharing information.

Set clear goals for the postmortem beforehand.

Use retrospective exercises to encourage participation and brainstorm root causes.

Measure the effectiveness of your postmortems to ensure everyone benefits.

Foster a culture of open communication to learn from incidents.

Focus on identifying systemic issues, not individual blame.

Use frameworks to guide your questioning and delve deeper.

Take time to understand the root cause before brainstorming solutions.

Utilize incident activity timelines to visualize the incident response process.

Consider using collaboration tools designed for incident response.

By following these tips, you can create meaningful incident postmortems that strengthen your incident response and help your team learn from past experiences.

On-call scheduling is a common practice for ensuring someone is available to address critical issues outside of regular work hours. This blog post explores challenges faced in on-call scheduling for incident response teams and how to overcome them.

The five pitfalls discussed are:

Unclear responsibilities: Clearly define what's expected of on-call staff.

Lack of flexibility: Allow staff to swap schedules and have backups.

Infrequent rotation: Establish a fair rotation plan with advanced notice.

Inadequate backup plans: Include secondary or tertiary on-call responders.

Ignoring location and time zones: Consider the "follow the sun" method or accommodate preferences.

The blog post concludes by mentioning Squadcast, an incident management solution that can streamline on-call scheduling and improve overall SRE practices.