Towards Operational Excellence

Part 2 —On the importance of tools

Once again, I’d like to express my gratitude to Peter Vosshall, Distinguished Engineer at AWS, for the inspiration behind this series of posts. I’d also like to thank my colleagues and friends Chris Munns, Matt Fitzgerald and Aileen Gemma Smith for their valuable feedback.

As discussed in Part 1 on culture, it takes three interconnecting elements to operate the technology we build successfully. First, you need to have the right culture. Second, you need great tools. And third, you need complete processes.

Part 1 of the series covered the cultural side of OE and examined Amazon’s culture in the context of its Leadership Principles (LPs). These LPs are the DNA of the company and the guiding principles by which every Amazonian operates. In Part 2, I discuss the tools but will continue to use LPs as the supporting framework to understand the motives and decisions made. Part 3 will cover processes.