The document discusses failures that can occur in projects and provides suggestions to prevent and recover from them. It suggests planning for failures by documenting work, testing implementations, verifying assumptions, considering different perspectives, and conducting post-mortems. Tools like wikis, test frameworks, staging environments, and collaboration with others can help address failures in documentation, testing, verification, imagination, and implementation. Conducting reflections and learning from mistakes is important for improving future work.
4. Plan for the worst.
Minimize risk.
Fail.
Recover, gracefully.
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5. “We don’t need a risk
management plan,” he
emphatically stated, “because this
project can’t be allowed to fail.”
- Jim Hightower,
http://jimhighsmith.com/2012/01/09/can-do-thinking-makes-risk-
management-impossible/
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21. Moving Day
Thanks, David Prior!
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22. Prevent documentation
failures.
• Write documentation.
• Update documentation.
• Make documenting a step in your written
process.
• Assign a fixed amount of time to that step.
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23. Documentation tools
• Graphic designers. (Pretty wikis. Pretty
docs. (Sphinx?) Diagrams.)
• Timelines.
• Bug tracking.
• Ordered todo lists.
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25. “My first day posing as a sysadmin
(~1990, no previous training....) I
deleted all zero length files on a Sun
workstation.”
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26. Prevent testing failures.
• Verify success criteria.
• Write tests.
• Test with a buddy.
• Have a plan.
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27. Testing tools
• Your favorite test framework
• Repeatable shell scripts
• Staging environments
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30. Prevent verification
failures.
• Have a plan for things going wrong.
• Have a staging environment.
• Test your rollback plan, not just your
implementation plan.
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31. Verification tools
• Staging environments
• Your buddy
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33. For my group the
bottom line was
"don't trust anyone".
Thanks, Maggie!
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34. Recover from failures
to imagine.
• Share your stories of failure.
• Talk with people who are different from
you.
• Act out implementation scenarios.
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38. Before
• Plan to do a post-mortem.
• Document the plan with numbered steps
and a timeline.
• Test the plan and the rollback plan.
• Identify a “point of no return”.
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39. During
• Screen sharing: UNIX screen,VNC, etc.
• Chatroom: IRC, AIM, Campfire (scrollback!)
• Voice: Campfire, Skype,VOIP, POTS call line
• Headsets!
• Designated time-keeper.
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40. After
• Documentation updates
• Post-mortem to identify areas of success
and areas for improvement.
• Limit improvements to 1-2 things.
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41. Plan for the worst.
Minimize risk.
Fail.
Recover, gracefully.
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42. Thanks! xn
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43. Mistakes were made
Selena Deckelmann
selena@primeradiant.com
Twitter/IRC: @selenamarie
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44. Photo credits
• Flickr: sheepguardingllama
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