How Google SRE and Developers Collaborate

This paper describes how Google's Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams collaborate with their developer (Dev) counterparts to improve the reliability, efficiency, and velocity of Google's products and infrastructure. The authors explain SRE's mission and guiding principles, and outline three main types of engagements between SRE and Dev teams:

1. Baseline engagements: Ad-hoc support and consultation from SRE to help Dev teams with reliability best practices and incident response.

2. Assisted engagements: SRE provides proactive, project-focused support to Dev teams, often related to design and implementation of new products or features. Dev retains primary responsibility for the service.

3. Full support engagements: SRE takes on significant operational responsibilities for critical, evolving services that require the highest reliability. SRE and Dev work in close partnership.

The paper includes case studies illustrating each engagement type. It also discusses anti-patterns to avoid and how to get engagements back on track when challenges arise. While every organization is different, the core SRE principles around specialist expertise, engineering focus, Dev partnership, and adaptive engagement can be applied flexibly in many contexts.

What's inside

• Powerful Insights — Learn how SRE and Dev teams collaborate effectively to improve reliability and velocity.
• 3 Key Concepts — Discover the three main types of SRE engagements and when to use each for maximum impact.
• Real World Insights — Gain insights from real-world case studies of successful and challenging SRE-Dev partnerships.
• Applicable Guidance — Understand core SRE principles that can be adapted to optimize your organization's approach.