DevOps Ownership for Managers
As an EM, how do you balance feature velocity with reliability/DevOps investment?
Answers use simple, clear English.
Audio N/AQuick interview answer
Treat reliability work as first-class roadmap (error budgets, SLO-driven priority). Reserve capacity (e.g., 20%) for toil reduction, make on-call sustainable, and require launch checklists. Say no/negotiate scope when SLOs are burning.
Detailed answer
Treat reliability work as first-class roadmap (error budgets, SLO-driven priority). Reserve capacity (e.g., 20%) for toil reduction, make on-call sustainable, and require launch checklists. Say no/negotiate scope when SLOs are burning. Measure both delivery and incident load.
Real example & use case
After two SEV-1s, EM reallocates a sprint to fix deploy automation and paging noise before new features.
Pros & cons
Pros: sustainable pace. Cons: short-term stakeholder pressure — communicate risk in business terms.