In a captivating conversation, Justin Sheehy, Chief Architect at Akamai, shares insights on making software safer and more resilient. He discusses the futility of root cause analysis and stresses the importance of a shared language for incident discussions. The need for malleable and observable software is highlighted, along with the understanding that all technology decisions are inherently business-oriented. Sheehy also addresses how AI's rise complicates engineers' abilities to handle production incidents, making resilience even more crucial.
59:48
forum Ask episode
web_stories AI Snips
view_agenda Chapters
auto_awesome Transcript
info_circle Episode notes
question_answer ANECDOTE
Origin Story: Becoming An Architect
Justin became an architect at Akamai when systems had unknown scale and required in-place improvement.
He and peers adopted the title to manage constraints and communicate design trade-offs.
insights INSIGHT
Changes Often Trigger Incidents
Many incidents are triggered by pushes of change rather than single root causes.
Treat changes as proximate causes and design systems to tolerate them.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Adopt A Shared Change-Safety Framework
Create a shared, simple framework of change-safety principles for your teams.
Use common language so SREs, DevOps, and architects can discuss and act quickly.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
In this podcast, Michael Stiefel spoke with Justin Sheehy about how to safely put software into production without creating production incidents. Among the topics discussed were the futility of root cause analysis, and the importance of having a shared language for discussing incidents. This discussion included the need for software to be malleable as well as observable, and noted the fact that there are no pure technology decisions, every one of them is a business decision. They also discussed how the growth and use of artificial intelligence poses a major problem for the ability of engineers to understand and fix production incidents.
Read a transcript of this interview: http://bit.ly/4o7iJsW
Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns and technologies:
https://www.infoq.com/software-architects-newsletter
Upcoming Events:
InfoQ Dev Summit Munich (October 15-16, 2025)
Essential insights on critical software development priorities.
https://devsummit.infoq.com/conference/munich2025
QCon San Francisco 2025 (November 17-21, 2025)
Get practical inspiration and best practices on emerging software trends directly from senior software developers at early adopter companies.
https://qconsf.com/
QCon AI New York 2025 (December 16-17, 2025)
https://ai.qconferences.com/
QCon London 2026 (March 16-19, 2026)
https://qconlondon.com/
The InfoQ Podcasts:
Weekly inspiration to drive innovation and build great teams from senior software leaders. Listen to all our podcasts and read interview transcripts:
- The InfoQ Podcast https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/
- Engineering Culture Podcast by InfoQ https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/#engineering_culture
- Generally AI: https://www.infoq.com/generally-ai-podcast/
Follow InfoQ:
- Mastodon: https://techhub.social/@infoq
- X: https://x.com/InfoQ?from=@
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/infoq/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InfoQdotcom#
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/infoqdotcom/?hl=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/infoq
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/infoq.com
Write for InfoQ: Learn and share the changes and innovations in professional software development.
- Join a community of experts.
- Increase your visibility.
- Grow your career.
https://www.infoq.com/write-for-infoq
The InfoQ Podcast