Workshop Title: Problem-solving & Communication for Systems Engineers — 60 min
Agenda (with times)
- 0–5 min: Welcome, objectives, norms
- 5–15 min: Short model: DESC for communication + structured troubleshooting (Hypothesis → Test → Iterate)
- 15–30 min: Exercise 1 (Individual): Fault triage
- 30–45 min: Exercise 2 (Pairs): Design trade-off discussion
- 45–55 min: Exercise 3 (Group): Incident postmortem roleplay
- 55–60 min: Wrap-up, takeaways, homework
Exercise 1 — Fault Triage (15 min, individual)
- Prompt: Given a service with high latency, logs show increased DB query times and a backlog on worker queue. List top 5 hypotheses, choose two to test, and write 3 commands/queries to run.
- Deliverable: Hypotheses + test steps
- Purpose: Structured reasoning, prioritization
Exercise 2 — Design Trade-off (15 min, pairs)
- Prompt: Choose between vertical scaling vs. sharding for a legacy datastore. One plays PM, one SE. 8 min to prepare, 7 min to present and defend.
- Deliverable: Decision, trade-offs, migration plan
- Purpose: Communication with stakeholders, cost/risks reasoning
Exercise 3 — Incident Postmortem Roleplay (10 min, group)
- Prompt: 2 simulated outages; group assigns roles (SE, SRE lead, QA). Produce 5 action items and root cause summary.
- Deliverable: 5 actionable follow-ups with owners
- Purpose: Cross-team communication, blameless analysis
Evaluation Rubrics (score 1–4)
- Communication
- 4: Clear, concise, uses metrics, aligns audience, summarizes decisions
- 2: Some gaps, occasional jargon, unclear next steps
- 1: Rambling, no clear ask or actions
- Reasoning & Problem-solving
- 4: Logical hypothesis chain, prioritized tests, risk-aware trade-offs
- 2: Missing prioritization or tests not actionable
- 1: No coherent plan or incorrect assumptions
- Collaboration (for pair/group)
- 4: Balanced participation, resolves disagreements constructively
- 1: Dominates or withdraws
Facilitator Hints
- Start with leading questions, not answers (e.g., “What observable data would change your hypothesis?”)
- Use graduated nudges: hint → suggest a metric → show a sample log only if stuck
- Avoid solving; model structuring (write hypotheses on board)
- Timebox tightly; cut hints if the group is making progress
Measuring Effectiveness After One Month
- Short survey: self-rated confidence (pre/post), 3 specific behavior questions (use of hypothesis-driven troubleshooting, documenting incident actions, stakeholder summaries)
- Review 4 anonymized runbooks/incidents for evidence of structured triage and clear action items
- Manager check-in: observed changes in on-call handoffs and postmortem quality
- Target: 30% increase in documented hypothesis-driven steps and 20% faster mean time to identify root cause in sampled incidents
This plan focuses on practical, cloud/infrastructure scenarios, measurable outcomes, and coaching-style facilitation to build durable skills.
