# How Learning is Different Than Fixing

- **期号**: SRE Weekly Issue #218（2020-05-10）
- **作者**: John Allspaw
- **链接**: https://www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/blog/2020/05/06/how-learning-is-different-than-fixing/

## 简介

> A key idea here is that rather than focusing on simply focusing on identifying fixes for parts involved in the event and instead focusing on developing a richer understanding of the event, a much greater ROI the effort will result, and that will include more effective “fixes” and more.

## 正文

I was honored to present a talk at the [AllTheTalks conference](https://www.allthetalks.org/) a few weeks back.

*tl;dr: slides are [here](https://speakerdeck.com/jallspaw/incident-analysis-how-star-learning-star-is-different-than-star-fixing-star), video is below*

The topic was *incident analysis* (big surprise there!) and the notion of *learning* and *fixing,* and how these activities are related but not the same.

A key idea here is that rather than focusing on simply focusing on identifying *fixes* for parts involved in the event and instead focusing on developing a richer understanding of the event, a much greater ROI the effort will result, and that will include more effective “fixes” and more.

By a “richer understanding” I mean facets and elements of the incident that include:

- the **origins** of the event
- the **history** of other relevant projects or incidents in the past
- what was **difficult** for people attempting to understand what was happening
- **where** the event came from,
- the **scope** of what they understood
- what **mattered** about the event at the time

you’ll have a better shot at capturing what is *interesting* for those who:

- were ***not*** there at the time,
- who ***were*** there at the time but will want to revisit details that they’ve forgotten about it sometime in the future, and
- who might not even work at the company yet.

Here is the ~30 minute talk, with the amazing [Sasha Rosenbaum](https://twitter.com/DivineOps) as my host! I’ve included an interactive transcript as well.