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fwiw, Reliability Engineering makes me think about Site Reliability Engineering, which is a different domain, and not what you want to cover as I understand it

this is worth a lot and i’m glad you’ve raised it, @Jessica Ulyate is “Technical Health” something you use in your org? Or something that you think fits this initiative best?

We don't use Technical Health, but I liked the ring of it. As you said, maintenance and tech debt both have slightly negative connotations. I guess health could also have mixed sentiments 🤔

this is true - do you think there is a negative feeling towards “maintenance” activities? or they’re just not that high of a business priority, so folks don’t feel they’re worth chatting about?

I guess it depends on how much maintenance you have to do 😛 In one of my teams, they own a lot of different products, so maintenance is seen as something that is taking up all of their time (negative connotation). We seem to talk a lot about when is something maintenance, and when is something an initiative (a planned project). In my opinion, maintenance is a small task that doesn’t require a lot of planning. If you need to do a large amount of work to keep something up and running, or to ensure it scales, then you should treat it as a project with specific outcomes you want to achieve

I like it - so maintenance should be something “painless” I guess (or as pain-free as possible). A click-of-a-button upgrade (and then approve what it wants to change) versus a DB restore test for example. What would you consider a small versus large project (maintenance-wise) in your products?

If it's less than a week's effort it's not a project 😛 Or if the complexity is very low