Modernizing digital operations for efficiency and resilience (MAM106)

Key Takeaways:

Introduction

  • The session focused on modernizing digital operations for efficiency and resilience.
  • The speakers included Jacob Östman, VP of Digital Transformation and Horizontal Engineering at Trimble, and Sean Arage, Executive Director of Incident Management at Sling TV.

Roles and Responsibilities

  • Trimble has a centralized team for Level 1 and Level 2 support, with more distributed experts for Level 3 and Level 4.
  • Sling TV has a similar setup, with a centralized tier one team and separate tier three and tier four teams, as well as specialized departments.
  • Both organizations have gone through a transformation in their incident management processes, moving from using PagerDuty as a simple rolodex to a more structured approach focused on engagement and communication.

Challenges and Lessons Learned

  • Both organizations have faced an increase in customer-impacting issues, driven by growing complexity and interconnectedness.
  • Trimble faced challenges during the Crowdstrike incident, where there was confusion around whether it was a security or cloud-related issue.
  • Sling TV has found that the biggest challenge is being able to see issues sooner, often due to monitoring tools not talking to each other or issues being missed due to noise or incorrect criticality settings.

Automation and AI

  • Both organizations are experimenting with AI and automation, but are taking a cautious and pragmatic approach.
  • The focus is on solving specific pain points for engineers and operators, rather than jumping straight to AI.
  • Sling TV is more focused on the "people" side of the equation, working to change the organizational culture and mindset around AI.
  • Trimble has set a goal of 90% of engineers using GitHub actively, as a way to drive adoption of AI-powered tools like GitHub Copilot.

Future Goals and Advice

  • Trimble's focus for the upcoming year is on connecting and scaling their digital ecosystem, including exposing more data in meaningful ways.
  • Sling TV's goal is to formalize their AI experimentation into a production-ready operational model, and to communicate the benefits to executive leadership.
  • Key advice includes:
    • Start small and iterate, rather than trying to achieve perfection before launching.
    • Don't be afraid of new technologies like AI, but focus on the people and change management aspects.
    • Slow down and understand the experiences and barriers of the people involved, not just the technology.

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