In a Land before Metrics
summary
Argues that metrics are always approximations and that Dora-style measurements don’t map to developer happiness, backing this with a half day outage that reveals no incident plan and prompts concrete changes: defined roles (including a separate communications role), enforced ownership for small teams, and scheduled incident response drills. Uses theater practices—rehearsal, scripted guidelines, intimacy coordination, ensemble improvisation and karaoke community building (Kuboki)—as repeatable techniques to build trust, autonomy and practice rather than chasing perfect optimization.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction
- 3:57Developer to artist and speaker
- 8:19Metrics fail to measure happiness
- 10:49Five team dysfunctions
- 13:17Uncertainty and improvisation in tech
- 17:51Power of community and practice
- 21:47Encouraging ownership
- 23:54Theater lessons for incident response
- 26:45Supporting local arts
- 27:28Tech problems are human problems
- 28:54Closing remarks
- 29:34Q&A
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