Quotes About Challenges

CIO stands for "Career Is Over." And VPs of IT Operations don't last much longer.

why does everything feel like I'm dealing with a government bureaucracy or an uncaring vendor? Maxine ponders. Maybe it's because when friends do favors for friends, we don't require them to open a ticket first.

But that's like throwing gasoline on the fire. Developers are even worse than networking people. Show me a developer who isn't crashing production systems, and I'll show you one who can't fog a mirror.

Technology keeps changing faster and faster, and it's nearly impossible to keep up anymore.

All the firefighting displaced all the planned work, both projects and changes

Unplanned work

business projects, like Phoenix,

When John agrees, I thank him for his time. "Wait, one more question. Why do you believe that this product didn't cause the failure? Did you test the change?" There's a short silence on the phone before John replies, "No, we couldn't test the change. There's no test environment. Apparently, you guys requested a budget years ago, but…" I should have known.

Great QA requires a perverse and sometimes sadistic intuition for what will cause software to blow up, crash, or endlessly hang. Maxine once heard a joke: "A QA engineer walks into a bar. Orders a beer. Orders zero beers. Orders 999,999,999 beers. Orders a lizard. Orders negative one beer. Orders a 'sfdeljknesv.

Before, I was merely worried that it Operations was under attack by Development, Information Security, Audit, and the business. Now, I'm starting to realize that my primary managers seem to be at war with each other, as well. What will it take for us to all get along?

Like all engineers, she secretly loves hearing disaster stories … as long as she doesn't have the starring role.

Information Security is always flashing their badges at people and making urgent demands, regardless of the consequences to the rest of the organization, which is why we don't invite them to many meetings. The best way to make sure something doesn't get done is to have them in the room.

Wes says defensively, "We all try to juggle the competing priorities as best as we can. That's life, right? Priorities change.

John Allspaw says, every incident is a learning opportunity, an unplanned investment that was made without our consent.

In technology, our work happens almost entirely within complex systems with a high risk of catastrophic consequences. As

One of the inherent challenges with initiatives such as DevOps transformations is that they are inevitably in conflict with ongoing business operations. Part

Complex work is managed so that problems in design and operations are revealed.

Something is really screwy in the world when I'm finding reasons to thank Development and Security in the same day.

Murphy does exist, so you'll always have unplanned work, but it must be handled efficiently.

It is possible to commit no mistakes and still loose. That is not a weakness. That is life.

Star Trek' says that it has not all happened, it has not all been discovered, that tomorrow can be as challenging and adventurous as any time man has ever lived. Gene Roddenberry

I'm just getting too old for this shit.

no strategy ever survived contact with the enemy. Or, in the vernacular, Things Will Go Wrong. Be Prepared.

one of the Library's mottos was borrowed directly from the great military thinker Clausewitz: no strategy ever survived contact with the enemy. Or, in the vernacular, Things Will Go Wrong. Be Prepared.