A Case Study in Community-Driven Software Adoption

Many SRE tasks are the same across all types of software, yet individual teams often develop very different automation tools and processes and can resist standardization. Why does this diversity exist? And how can an organization prevent SRE teams from duplicating their development efforts while cutting down on their manual labor? This case study details how and why several teams at Google eventually gravitated to one tool—Sisyphus—despite its lack of managerial support, best practices, and high-quality code.

Google engineer Richard Bondi examines how Sisyphus was able to proliferate across Google’s SRE teams. You’ll delve into data that demonstrates Sisyphus’s adoption success and learn how this tool overcame two significant challenges along the way. This case study offers site reliability engineers, managers, and organizational practitioners a clear example of how a tool influenced SRE behavior by adapting to SRE culture.

You’ll explore ways to:

• Tailor tool development to the specifics of your organization's environment
• Design tools that are adaptable to individual SRE teams
• Accommodate teams and individuals who have traditionally been resistant to top-down mandates
• Decide when a tool is "good enough" rather than perfect