Observability Virtual Conference 2020 – The Human Side of Observability

Presenters: Melanie Cey, Senior Systems Reliability Engineer

Abstract:

Dashboards are an analyst’s interpretation of the state of a system or one of the system’s components. Good analysts know that complex systems are constantly degraded, and that no amount of dashboards will solve all their problems. We need humans to interpret data and make decisions, especially during perceived crisis situations.  How is it that some team members are really great at troubleshooting where others seem to flounder? If you’re new to the field, you might have noticed that the senior folks seem to have it all figured out. How did they get there? What did that journey look like? If you’re experienced, maybe you have wondered how you became a great problem solver. I hope to encourage you to reflect and think about how to get better and teach others. In this talk we will explore troubleshooting methodologies, the effects of some cognitive biases, and the importance of the underlying skills we need to be good at solving problems.

About the Presenter:

Melanie Cey leads the Cloud Monitoring team in the Cloud Services department at Yardi Systems Inc. Yardi’s Cloud Services teams manage the physical and virtual compute infrastructure for thousands of clients across multiple data-centers throughout the world.

Melanie’s team is responsible for the implementation and administration of monitoring, alerting, log aggregation and analysis tools.

Melanie grew up on a grain farm in Southern Saskatchewan, Canada and currently resides with her husband and son in the Santa Barbara, CA area near Yardi’s headquarters. She believes in lifelong learning, being kind, and leading by example. 
 

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