qualitylab

the station / chart

The chart

Eight sectors seen from above. You are in the middle with nothing adopted, and distance from the centre is prerequisite depth — how far along a sector you have actually got. A control that moves two sectors at once sits between them, which is why the lines cut across the disc.

Pick any control to plot a course to it. The chart lights the prerequisites in the order you would do them, and fills in the position that course would leave you in across all eight sectors.

01 FEEDBACK LATENCY02 REVERSIBILITY03 BLAST RADIUS04 DETERMINISM05 OBSERVABILITY06 CHANGE COUPLING07 KNOWLEDGE DISTRIBUTION08 SLACKAlert on what users feel, not on what machines feel — tier II, cost mediumBook the time for the boring fix before the week fills — tier II, cost highTurn it on for a cohort before everyone — tier III, cost mediumDeploy dark; release with a flag — tier II, cost mediumMigrate in expand and contract, never in place — tier IV, cost mediumReproduce the bug in a failing test before fixing it — tier IV, cost lowEvery flag gets a removal deadline when it is created — tier III, cost lowTests bring their own world — tier II, cost highEvery deploy leaves a mark in the telemetry — tier III, cost lowModel-check the algorithm you cannot test your way out of — tier III, cost highMutation-test the diff, not the repo — tier I, cost highGive every component an owner, and watch the drive-by edits — tier II, cost lowOne command builds and tests the project from a clean checkout — tier IV, cost lowRolling back is one step, and it is practised — tier III, cost mediumPin every dependency to an exact version — tier II, cost lowMake it safe to say the thing nobody wants to hear — tier III, cost highA quarantined test has a deadline, not a drawer — tier II, cost lowA review with no discussion is not a review — tier II, cost lowA second person has actually done the risky task — tier II, cost mediumShape the suite by what each test costs and can catch — tier IV, cost mediumPut static analysis in the review, not in a backlog — tier III, cost mediumEvery change runs the suite before a human looks at it — tier III, cost mediumKnow the truck factor of anything you cannot afford to lose — tier II, cost mediumBranches live hours, not weeks — tier II, cost mediumWrite down decisions, with the reasoning and the alternatives — tier IV, cost lowYOU