Don't Cross the Streams - Op Tasks, SRE Teams & Sprint
summary
Argues that SRE time should be measured and enforced: set targets (initial plan ~50% ops, 50% project, 20% admin), then reality often looks like >50% ops, ~40% meetings, ~10% projects, which regresses systems. Recommends concrete practices: block calendar for project vs ops time, track operational work as a sprint story in Jira, create a two-team split (platform team in scrum for long projects and embedded SREs in kanban for ad hoc ops), nominate a weekly triage escalation with a capped load and rotate people.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction and background
- 1:03Types of work in SRE
- 3:50Time allocation targets
- 5:35Why operational work wins
- 8:43Individual coping strategies
- 11:53SRE teams vs groups
- 13:38Tracking operational work
- 16:03Splitting teams for focus
- 17:48Platform and reliability teams
- 18:31Triage and escalation
- 19:12Data-driven decisions
