I had a great talk recently with one of my favorite peeps – John-Daniel Trask, CEO of Raygun. We talk about the importance of monitoring and making that connection with the customer experience, and what he’s seen go right – and wrong – in working with companies large and small. We’re huge fans of Raygun and see this company’s growth as a natural byproduct of producing the right product that reinforces all the behaviors we want out of the DevOps movement. Enjoy!

I always enjoy talking with John-Daniel and he was a big factor in monitoring and metrics taking up so much room in my book. Here’s some of the topics we cover:

• How to aggregate errors so you don’t feel like you’re putting out a tire fire with a water pistol
• Best practices around real user monitoring, crash monitoring and APM
• First things first; why crash reporting should be the first thing you port out
• How John-Daniel is adjusting to life as a new father (welcome Henry!) and what it was like growing a global business as a young entrepreneur
• How Google changed the game around how responsive and user-centric websites and services are
• A fact we often forget: software is written ultimately for humans. “Software gives us the power to amplify human ability.”
• Another great all-time quote, from his mentor: “It’s not the big that eats the small, it’s the fast that eats the slow.”

One last great quote to end on: “DevOps is about making engineering teams as reliably fast as possible.”

A link to the interview is here – and it’s on the podcast platform of your choice. Apple, Google, Spotify, blah blah…. We’re on all the major platforms now, including Anchor, Apple, Google, Spotify, PocketCasts, and RadioPublic. Please support the podcast, and we’d love to hear your feedback about the book!

Enjoy the podcast!