SRE Methods In an Agency Environment

How do you hand over a reliable application without the chaos? Learn the SRE principles for successful client handovers in a fast-paced agency.

#1about 1 minute

Defining the core concepts of SLI, SLO, and SLA

Understand the foundational SRE terms: Service Level Indicators (SLI) as measurements, Service Level Objectives (SLO) as targets, and Service Level Agreements (SLA) as contracts with penalties.

#2about 6 minutes

Mapping SRE responsibilities in an agency-customer model

Clarify the roles and responsibilities between the agency, the customer, and the end-user clients using a simple relationship model.

#3about 4 minutes

Collaboratively creating SLO documentation with customers

Navigate the process of defining realistic SLOs with customers, from initial guessing games and benchmarking to periodic evaluation after launch.

#4about 2 minutes

Navigating the two primary application handover scenarios

Prepare for two distinct handover situations: when the customer has the capacity to take over operations versus when the agency retains responsibility for reliability.

#5about 3 minutes

The three essential SRE documents for agencies

Implement a "holy trinity" of documentation—the SLO document, support playbooks, and postmortems—to ensure clarity and operational readiness.

#6about 4 minutes

How to write effective and blameless postmortems

Structure postmortems to be detailed and blameless by including key sections like impact, root cause, resolution, action items, and a minute-by-minute timeline.

#7about 4 minutes

Defining key roles for effective incident management

Establish clear responsibilities during an incident by assigning an Incident Commander, Communications Lead, and Operations Lead to streamline resolution.

#8about 5 minutes

Managing unexpected costs from environment and security issues

Account for unexpected work from cloud provider changes and security vulnerabilities by using an error budget policy to assess impact and prioritize fixes.

#9about 4 minutes

Securely handing over credentials and application secrets

Execute a secure handover by properly managing user credentials in cloud environments like GCP and AWS and using secret managers for application secrets.

#10about 3 minutes

Finalizing the handover with documentation and tooling

Complete the project handover by sharing the essential SRE documents, explaining relevant tooling, and conducting an adoption period with the customer's team.

#11about 9 minutes

Key takeaways for applying SRE in an agency

Recognize that SRE is often underestimated, requires extensive explanation, and should ultimately focus on improving the user experience rather than just methodology.