DevOps & Autism Care

submited by

Style Pass

2021-06-14 07:00:11

Approximately 1 in 54 children are diagnosed as being on the Autism spectrum. I have two children on the spectrum and providing care for them is a challenge. Change is exceptionally disruptive for my sons. My wife and I have adopted many of the core tenets of DevOps and Reliability Engineering into the care model we use. We leverage small change sets, active observability, continuous improvement, and blamelessness. I think what our experience shows is the strength and importance of the human elements of DevOps culture, not just for our work teams and orgs, but how we approach challenges in all aspects of life. Our life illustrates that high performing and happy teams exhibit empathy and respect for each other and their work.

Our adoption and adaptation of DevOps culture is a unique story of leading a transformation in a setting where team members were not initiated or familiar with DevOps culture. Telling our story requires a few important caveats first. This story is about the adoption of Devops culture by our core care team, this is not a story about specific therapies or care plans. This story is very tightly scoped to my children; autistic people are not a monolith, and must be included in any discussions concerning their lives, care, and rights. This story is not about eliminating or reducing toil. Caring for my sons is not about making my life easier or less toilsome. It is about ensuring they build important skills toward living happy, independent, and fulfilled lives.

My sons are happy, healthy kids. Aiden and Henry are a lot like neurotypical little boys in many ways. They love to play outside, watch cartoons, play with their family and friends, and they love to run around and be loud! They do live very different lives however. Both Aiden and Henry are non-speaking - they do not rely on spoken language as their primary method of communication. Both of the boys have sensory processing disorder; meaning they physically experience stimuli in different ways from most people. They face challenges in building important skills and coping in situations which are discomforting or difficult for them to understand. In our efforts to meet these challenges, our team has adopted many of the same principles your engineering teams use to build strong collaborative cultures and achieve high performance as a team and in your systems.