"The reaction to failure is not a linear function of the weight or impact of the failure. We have seen lower impact failures produce stronger reactions than high impact ones." www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/2026/03/07/o...

The people behind and part of this community have been a huge influence on my own learning and progression around systems thinking and resilience engineering. I’m glad to see the community organizing itself—and to be a member of it all.

@resilienceinsoftware.org · 2y ago

Introducing the Resilience in Software Foundation: a multi-disciplinary group interested in networking with and learning from each other's unique experiences, and helping to disseminate their knowledge to the broader software industry as a whole. resilienceinsoftware.org/news/1092580

Resilience engineering is about how successful systems are able to modify themselves to deal with a shock that is outside of what they can handle. This video by David Woods illustrates this phenomenon using the real-life example of an ER dealing with an influx of burn patients. youtu.be/duNMGTmZ4FA

Resilience Engineering 101: Part 11 Beyond Surge Capacity

YouTube video by CSEL BackChannel

youtu.be

Part of Resilience Engineering is knowing Compensation happens, and knowing how to protect, foster, and build on this type of capacity to keep systems successful; keeping it invisible increases the chances it reaches saturation, and fails in a cascade. Posted on @resilienceinsoftware.org

Decompensation and Cascading Failures

Consider the following scenario: A set of automated tasks has somehow failed to run to completion. Because a thorough fix will take some time and the tasks you need run are time-sensitive, you complet...

resilienceinsoftware.org

Does anyone have first-hand experience with using an AI agent that has “participated” in the response to an actual incident in a genuinely diagnostic — or otherwise contextually-specific way?

There are a couple of phrases I genuinely despise. One of them is "...we're at an inflection point..." 1. That's not how inflection points work. 2. Hindsight's a helluva drug, isn't it? 3. Just say you are at a loss to explain some recent surprises. It's honest and not unnecessarily dramatic.

@staysaasy.bsky.social I’m not on X very much, finally collected notes on the post docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Misunderstanding the blameless postmortem post

Accountability vs. Punishment The biggest misunderstanding is that it seems like you’re conflating "blameless" with "no accountability." Your post claims that blameless cultures mean "people believe...

docs.google.com

For leaders with expectations about how more productive, efficient, etc. the software engineers in their org will be with AI: 1. How are you handling the "Left-Over Principle" challenges? 2. Also: customer comms about the incidents involving code produced AI? (Seems clear #2 is depends on #1)

Another real life demonstration of Ironies of Automation

Sleepin Dogo@sleepindogo.bsky.social · last yr.

This is pretty funny. The teleoperated Optimus popcorn server appears to have a full-time sweeper. How efficient....

Incidents happen because people do things that have always worked successfully, up until the incident. Doing something that always worked in the past is completely rational!

I'm now talking with Hamed Silatani, Alex Hibbitt, and Beth Adele Long about the various Catch-22 situations leaders find themselves in when responding to incidents! www.linkedin.com/events/incid...

[Incident Fest] - The Catch-22 of Executives in Incidents | LinkedIn

Join us for a short-but-sweet live session that focuses on the role of executives during incident management. Although the session is prerecorded, our experts will participate in a Q&A in the comment...

linkedin.com

Watching www.youtube.com/live/Uxe_mw8...

[Incident Fest] - What Does Great Incident Response Look Like?

YouTube video by Uptime Labs

youtube.com

New blog post: surfingcomplexity.blog/2025/05/15/l...

Labeling a root cause is predicting the future, poorly

Why do we retrospect on our incidents? Why spend the time doing those write-ups and holding review meetings? We don’t do this work as some sort of intellectual exercise for amusement. Rather,…

surfingcomplexity.blog

New blog post: surfingcomplexity.blog/2025/05/10/w...

When a bad analysis is worse than none at all

One of the most famous physics experiments in modern history is the double-split experiment, originally performed by the English physicist Thomas Young back in 1801. You probably learned about this…

surfingcomplexity.blog

1. PEOPLE keep things working. 2. When things break down, PEOPLE work to make the consequences much less than they might have been otherwise. Both dynamics are, for the most part, invisible to management. (via @lauramaguire.bsky.social's dissertation)

I recently read the paper "Towards Joint Activity Design Heuristics: Essentials for Human-Machine Teaming" which I loved so much I wanted to make it easier to share. To that end, I've excerpted the Ten Heuristics from the paper here: human-machine.team with anchors for each heuristic.

What a great podcast! Honored to be talking about Resilience Engineering with @colettecello.bsky.social and @spamaps.org!

This is Fine!@thisisfinepod.com · last yr.

@allspaw.bsky.social joined us last week to help contrast ITIL's approach of "Counting and tabulating incidents" with the resilience engineering way of looking directly at the messy reality underneath them. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cimc...

Two years ago, at the first LFI Conference, we spoke alongside a client of ours (Indeed) about the amazing progress they had made in learning effectively from incidents. This is what "good" looks like with respect to learning effectively from incidents. www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/2025/02/28/w...

@allspaw.bsky.social joined us last week to help contrast ITIL's approach of "Counting and tabulating incidents" with the resilience engineering way of looking directly at the messy reality underneath them. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cimc...

Episode 10 - When They go Full ITIL on You w/special guest John Allspaw

YouTube video by thisisfinepodcast

youtube.com

Preach! youtu.be/cimcogNc02I?... 13:30-16:30

Episode 10 - When They go Full ITIL on You w/special guest John Allspaw

YouTube video by thisisfinepodcast

youtu.be

John Allspaw@allspaw.bsky.social · last yr.

What a great podcast! Honored to be talking about Resilience Engineering with @colettecello.bsky.social and @spamaps.org!

What a great podcast! Honored to be talking about Resilience Engineering with @colettecello.bsky.social and @spamaps.org!

This is Fine!@thisisfinepod.com · last yr.

@allspaw.bsky.social joined us last week to help contrast ITIL's approach of "Counting and tabulating incidents" with the resilience engineering way of looking directly at the messy reality underneath them. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cimc...

The Resilience in Software Foundation blog included notes I wrote for the paper "Four Concepts for Resilience Engineering" in their post today: resilienceinsoftware.org/news/1149720

Three Takes on Four Concepts for Resilience Engineering

Ed note: The first time I read Dr. David Woods' paper Four Concepts for Resilience Engineering, I felt so many things click in my brain. While the field of Resilience Engineering is not new, those of ...

resilienceinsoftware.org

Very few know we've (@adaptivecapacity.bsky.social) been developing tools to help support us. After 7 years & 6 patents (!) we realized others were interested in integrating/commercializing "Churchkey." We’re looking for partners interested in licensing Churchkey's IP. churchkey.info

Beyond just the language setting ourselves up for failure, "root cause" have deeper issues. For me it triggers anxiety everytime i hear it. @allspaw.bsky.social has articulated it very well the issues here. Recommended material for SRE-201: github.com/readme/guide...

What we talk about when we talk about ‘root cause’

Instead of finding the ‘root cause’ to incidents and issues, @allspaw says it’s more accurate to try and break down what created the ‘perfect storm’:

github.com

The beauty of your incident categorization scene is no match for the messiness of the real world.

I am so excited to announce the Resilience in Software Foundation - a project we've been working on for awhile now. 💜

@resilienceinsoftware.org · 2y ago

Introducing the Resilience in Software Foundation: a multi-disciplinary group interested in networking with and learning from each other's unique experiences, and helping to disseminate their knowledge to the broader software industry as a whole. resilienceinsoftware.org/news/1092580

Hey folks, new episode up today! Come listen to us chat with @courtneynash.bsky.social about the ironies of automation, AI, HABA-MABA, and the impending job shortage of people who can grok how AI broke it... youtu.be/i4qMmp6-hXg

Episode 7 - AI and Resilience with special guest Courtney Nash

YouTube video by thisisfinepodcast

youtu.be

A talk I gave last year at SRECon Americas, "Real Talk: What We Think We Know — That Just Ain’t So" about the importance of thinking deliberately and critically about our assumptions, and admitting when we get things wrong... www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/2025/01/07/r...

In 2015, I attended my first Resilience Engineering Symposium. I felt excited and nervous sharing our domain of software with such accomplished audience. A decade later, I’m part of a fast-growing community of others in software passionate about RE, committed to creating a better future.

@resilienceinsoftware.org · 2y ago

Introducing the Resilience in Software Foundation: a multi-disciplinary group interested in networking with and learning from each other's unique experiences, and helping to disseminate their knowledge to the broader software industry as a whole. resilienceinsoftware.org/news/1092580