Posts Tagged ‘LaurentLeca’
[DevoxxFR2025] Alert, Everything’s Burning! Mastering Technical Incidents
In the fast-paced world of technology, technical incidents are an unavoidable reality. When systems fail, the ability to quickly detect, diagnose, and resolve issues is paramount to minimizing impact on users and the business. Alexis Chotard, Laurent Leca, and Luc Chmielowski from PayFit shared their invaluable experience and strategies for mastering technical incidents, even as a rapidly scaling “unicorn” company. Their presentation went beyond just technical troubleshooting, delving into the crucial aspects of defining and evaluating incidents, effective communication, product-focused response, building organizational resilience, managing on-call duties, and transforming crises into learning opportunities through structured post-mortems.
Defining and Responding to Incidents
The first step in mastering incidents is having a clear understanding of what constitutes an incident and its severity. Alexis, Laurent, and Luc discussed how PayFit defines and categorizes technical incidents based on their impact on users and business operations. This often involves established severity levels and clear criteria for escalation. Their approach emphasized a rapid and coordinated response involving not only technical teams but also product and communication stakeholders to ensure a holistic approach. They highlighted the importance of clear internal and external communication during an incident, keeping relevant parties informed about the status, impact, and expected resolution time. This transparency helps manage expectations and build trust during challenging situations.
Technical Resolution and Product Focus
While quick technical mitigation to restore service is the immediate priority during an incident, the PayFit team stressed the importance of a product-focused approach. This involves understanding the user impact of the incident and prioritizing resolution steps that minimize disruption for customers. They discussed strategies for effective troubleshooting, leveraging monitoring and logging tools to quickly identify the root cause. Beyond immediate fixes, they highlighted the need to address the underlying issues to prevent recurrence. This often involves implementing technical debt reduction measures or improving system resilience as a direct outcome of incident analysis. Their experience showed that a strong collaboration between engineering and product teams is essential for navigating incidents effectively and ensuring that the user experience remains a central focus.
Organizational Resilience and Learning
Mastering incidents at scale requires building both technical and organizational resilience. The presenters discussed how PayFit has evolved its on-call rotation models to ensure adequate coverage while maintaining a healthy work-life balance for engineers. They touched upon the importance of automation in detecting and mitigating incidents faster. A core tenet of their approach was the implementation of structured post-mortems (or retrospectives) after every significant incident. These post-mortems are blameless, focusing on identifying the technical and process-related factors that contributed to the incident and defining actionable steps for improvement. By transforming crises into learning opportunities, PayFit continuously strengthens its systems and processes, reducing the frequency and impact of future incidents. Their journey over 18 months demonstrated that investing in these practices is crucial for any growing organization aiming to build robust and reliable systems.
Links:
- Alexis Chotard: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexis-chotard/
- Laurent Leca: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurent-leca/
- Luc Chmielowski: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luc-chmielowski/
- PayFit: https://payfit.com/
- Devoxx France LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/devoxx-france/
- Devoxx France Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/devoxx.fr
- Devoxx France Website: https://www.devoxx.fr/