Articles by Dan Pupuis
Dan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Range. Before that, he was the Head of Engineering at Medium and a Staff Software Engineer at Google
If Dr House did DevOpsDifferential Diagnosis (DDx) is a useful framework for software engineers to use when responding to incidents. It is based on the process used by Dr. House and his team in the TV series, where they huddle around a whiteboard to list symptoms and possible causes, and prioritize the list of causes. DDx can help make decisions in a stressful situation and train less-experienced engineers in incident response. It is also more fun to think of incident response as solving a mystery, rather than just responding to a snafu. DDx can help rule out simple, common explanations, gather data, list possible causes, and prioritize the list of causes. Treating symptoms can help uncover the root cause of the incident.