This is Fine! A podcast about resilience engineering and software
This is Fine! A podcast about resilience engineering and software
Podcast Description
A podcast about resilience engineering and software.
Ever wondered why things on the internet break? Do you work in software and wish that you could have a Dear-Abby-Like call-in show that could answer your deepest questions about how to make your workplace suck less? We're here to help!
Write us anonymously at our open question form
Email us at: [email protected]
Call us and leave a voicemail, or text us at: (401) 592-7574
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast covers a variety of themes centering on resilience engineering, including human factors in system failures, AI's role in resilience, and practical recommendations for newcomers to the field. Notable episodes include a guest discussion with Courtney Nash on AI and resilience, as well as an exploration of the 2024 DORA report's implications for software performance.

A podcast about resilience engineering and software.
Ever wondered why things on the internet break? Do you work in software and wish that you could have a Dear-Abby-Like call-in show that could answer your deepest questions about how to make your workplace suck less? We’re here to help!
Write us anonymously at our open question form
Email us at: [email protected]
Call us and leave a voicemail, or text us at: (401) 592-7574
The new website is live! thisisfinepod.com
You can find John Allspaw at Adaptive Capacity Labs: https://www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com
Mike McGill, the skateboarder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_McGill
Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets, referenced by our question-asker is a great one: https://bookshop.org/p/books/thinking-in-bets-making-smarter-decisions-when-you-don-t-have-all-the-facts-annie-duke/31466984521c3d8a?ean=9780735216372&next=t
Naturalistic Decision Making has its own association, which has a ton of resources (and a conference!) – https://naturalisticdecisionmaking.org/
They also have a podcast! https://naturalisticdecisionmaking.org/new-podcast/
Gary Klein is the NDM guy – https://bookshop.org/p/books/seeing-what-others-don-t-the-remarkable-ways-we-gain-insights-chief-scientist-gary-klein/c4ae5e017fe005ff?ean=9781610393829&next=t
We contrast him and his style of approaching cognition and decision making with Kahneman and Tversky.
Kahneman and Tversky wrote a lot, but Judgement Under Uncertainty is probably the most famous? https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.185.4157.1124
And Kahneman wrote Thinking Fast and Slow: https://bookshop.org/p/books/thinking-fast-and-slow-daniel-kahneman-phd/83a544fe6f98df87?ean=9780606275644&next=t
It has been zero episodes since we’ve mentioned Lisanne Bainbridge’s Ironies of Automation: https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf
But also she has Verbal Reports as evidence of the process operator’s knowledge: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1071581979603075?via%3Dihub
And the Etsy Debriefing Guide is super great: https://extfiles.etsy.com/DebriefingFacilitationGuide.pdf
Sidney Dekker and The Field Guide are foundational: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-field-guide-to-understanding-human-error-sidney-dekker/3a4209dfc8b3a721?ean=9781472439055&next=t
From Dekker’s field guide (pg 47) there is a list referencing Gary Klein’s questions for an incident investigation:
Cues:
What were you seeing?
What were you focusing on?
What were you expecting to happen?
Interpretation:
If you had to describe the situation to your colleague at that point, what would you have told?
Errors:
What mistakes (for example in interpretation) were likely at this point?
Previous experience/knowledge:
Were you reminded of any previous experience?
Did this situation fit a standard scenario?
Were you trained to deal with this situation?
Were there any rules that applied clearly here?
Did any other sources of knowledge suggest what to do?
Goals:
What were you trying to achieve?
Were there multiple goals at the same time?
Was there time pressure or other limitations on what you could do?
Taking action:
How did you judge you could influence the course of events?
Did you discuss or mentally imagine a number of options or did you know straight away what to do?
Outcome:
Did the outcome fit your expectation?
Did you have to update your assessment of the situation?
John mentioned Uptime Labs, who do staged worlds for software incidents: https://uptimelabs.io/
Facets of Complexity in Situated Work is here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345523195_Facets_of_Complexity_in_Situated_Work
On the Jamie Zawinski quote: https://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247
If you don’t know the parable of the blind men and the elephant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

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