Handling the Interruptive Nature of Operations: A World of Squirrels and Shiny Objects
LISA: Where systems engineering and operations professionals share real-world knowledge about designing, building, and maintaining the critical systems of our interconnected world.
The LISA conference has long served as the annual vendor-neutral meeting place for the wider system administration community. The LISA14 program recognized the overlap and differences between traditional and modern IT operations and engineering, and developed a highly-curated program around 5 key topics: Systems Engineering, Security, Culture, DevOps, and Monitoring/Metrics. The program included 22 half- and full-day training sessions; 10 workshops; and a conference program consisting of 50 invited talks, panels, refereed paper presentations, and mini-tutorials.
Avleen Vig, Etsy, Inc., and Carolyn Rowland, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Avleen Vig, Etsy, Inc.
Avleen is a Staff Operations Engineer at Etsy, where he spends much of his time growing the infrastructure for selling knitted gloves and cross-stitched periodic tables. Before joining Etsy he worked at several large tech companies, including EarthLink and Google, as well as a number of small successful startups.
Carolyn Rowland, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Carolyn Rowland began her UNIX system administration career in 1991 and currently leads an ops/dev team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). She credits her success with being able to be the bridge between senior management and technology. Her team has distinguished itself as a leader in the development of new technology solutions that solve business and research problems within the Engineering Laboratory and across the NIST campus.
author = {Avleen Vig and Carolyn Rowland},
title = {Handling the Interruptive Nature of Operations: A World of Squirrels and Shiny Objects},
year = {2014},
address = {Seattle, WA},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = nov
}
The interrupt-driven nature of Operations can create a high-stress, low-productivity workplace, while providing the illusion of high-productivity. We will discuss the nature of operations work and how engineers and managers can both work to manage interruptions and create a better environment.
Operations Engineers of all levels.
Attendees will be able to understand how to manage interruptions and increase their productivity.
- What are interruptions and why do we care
- Interruption science!
- The problems with common approaches
- Coping strategies in general and those used by the speakers
- Unique challenges of remote workers and teams
- Details on how to use the tools and methods to maximum advantage
