Exploring the Unintended Consequences of Automation in Software • Courtney Nash • GOTO 2024

This presentation was recorded at GOTO Copenhagen 2024. #GOTOcon #GOTOcph https://gotocph.com Courtney Nash - Founder of the VOID RESOURCES https://bsky.app/profile/courtneynash.bsky.social https://twitter.com/courtneynash https://linkedin.com/in/nashcourtney ABSTRACT Automation is ubiquitous—it is entwined in our daily lives in ways that we aren’t always aware of. It has been woven into all aspects of modern software by being presented as a utopian vision: a way of making human lives easier, doing repetitive tasks faster and with fewer errors, freeing us fallible humans up to do other ostensibly more important work. But anyone who has worked directly with automated systems knows that we are still very far from such a dreamy reality. This talk delves into detailed research about how automation is involved in software incidents. My focus on this area stems from the growing portrayal of automation as a panacea for various software incident issues, despite its limitations in effectively addressing these challenges, such as reliable detection and resolution of software issues or analyzing and disseminating learnings from these incidents back into the organization and its products and services. Drawn directly from public incident reports (collected in the VOID), this research revealed multiple, often competing, roles that automation can play over the course of an incident, and most importantly underscored how important humans are at understanding, troubleshooting, and recovering from automated software issues. If you're struggling to convey the reality behind the hype of automation and AI to others on your team or at your organization, this is the talk for you. [...] TIMECODES 00:00 Intro 05:47 Unexpected consequences of automation in software 17:23 Research from The VOID 25:33 Automation themes 27:32 Better automation through joint cognitive systems 34:02 Outro Download slides and read the full abstract here: https://gotocph.com/2024/sessions/3321 RECOMMENDED BOOKS Nora Jones & Casey Rosenthal • Chaos Engineering • https://www.verica.io/book Nora Jones & Casey Rosenthal • Chaos Engineering • https://amzn.to/3hUmuAH Aaron Rinehart • Security Chaos Engineering • https://www.verica.io/sce-book Mikolaj Pawlikowski • Chaos Engineering • https://amzn.to/2SQ5Olf Russ Miles • Learning Chaos Engineering • https://amzn.to/3hCiUe8 Murphy, Beyer, Jones & Petoff • Site Reliability Engineering • https://amzn.to/2Vg6Mbr https://bsky.app/profile/gotocon.com https://twitter.com/GOTOcon https://www.linkedin.com/company/goto- https://www.instagram.com/goto_con https://www.facebook.com/GOTOConferences #Automation #SoftwareAutomation #SoftwareQuality #QA #QUalityAssurance #CourtneyNash #TheVOID CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket at https://gotopia.tech Sign up for updates and specials at https://gotopia.tech/newsletter SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL - new videos posted almost daily. https://www.youtube.com/user/GotoConferences/?sub_confirmation=1