At SleepScore Labs, Squadcast has truly transformed how we handle incidents. It's made our processes smoother and more efficient, thanks to its user-friendly interface and powerful automation features. With Squadcast, managing incidents is a breeze, whether we're at our desks or on the move. Plus, its collaboration capabilities have helped us maintain our high standards and continuously improve.
Founded in 2016, SleepScore Labs, a pioneer in sleep science, has analyzed over 100 million hours of sleep data to enhance global sleep quality. With flagship products like SleepScore and SleepScore Max, leveraging cutting-edge non-contact technology, the company guides individuals toward better sleep and extends its influence to empower leading enterprises in the health and wellness sector.
Amidst their strategic shift from a business-to-consumer (B2C) to a business-to-business (B2B) focus, SleepScore Labs identified the need for a robust Incident Management solution.
In this case study, Paraig Whelan, DevOps Engineer, details how the adoption of Squadcast not only addressed challenges but also helped establish efficiency, automation, and scalability in their incident handling processes.
Initially, SleepScore was looking for a more efficient Incident Management workflow with Squadcast.
Squadcast is SleepScore’s first Incident Management Tool that allowed them to establish a process from Zero to automation.
SleepScore was looking to address and resolve issues as a dedicated On-Call alerting platform was lacking. Squadcast’s Incident Management capabilities were a crucial aspect of safeguarding SleepScore's sleep science endeavors for maintaining a seamless experience for both their individual consumers and enterprise clients.
The outcome? A complete overhaul in how incidents were handled with streamlined alerting, and maintaining a resilient workflow.
From Chaos to Control: Transition to Structured On-Call Management
Previously, SleepScore's small DevOps team managed incidents in an ad-hoc manner, relying on email and Microsoft Teams channels for communication. The alerts, originating from their monitoring platform, Datadog, were the trigger points for their Incident Response. However, they eventually transitioned to Checkly.
All alerts generated by Checkly are now seamlessly directed to Squadcast, and the implementation of Schedules & Rotations ensures a systematic approach to On-Call duties. As time has progressed, Sleep Score has successfully broadened the array of monitoring tools that channel alerts into Squadcast, enhancing their Incident Management capabilities within the platform.
The integration with Checkly for API monitoring streamlines the alerting process. Signing up for On-Call has become a breeze, thanks to Squadcast's user-friendly interface, ensuring accurate and timely alert setups for the SleepScore team.
Smooth Sailing On-Call Operations Via Mobile Incident Response
When you have all the important apps on your phone, why not Squadcast too? Squadcast Mobile App is an easy way for SleepScore to get full visibility of their schedules, team, and On-Call rotations. It allows them to perform all Incident Response actions on the go!
Incident Response Automation: No longer optional; it's a must.
One major advantage of using an automated Incident Management system lies in its speed. By reducing the need for human involvement, you can significantly decrease both Mean Time to Detection (MTTD) and Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR).
The trio of Schedules, Service Catalog, and On-Call Alerting removed manual burden, ensured smooth handoffs with escalation policies, and delivered clear alerts tailored to the right people based on tagging & routing.
Using Squadcast, we can efficiently control alerts by suppressing them and adjusting severity levels based on the diverse alerts received from Checkly.
Culture of Continuous Learning & Collaboration
From small teams to enterprise level, minimum downtime is the goal of every organization. Notes and conferences in Squadcast foster real-time collaboration amongst SleepScore’s team members, ensuring critical information is shared instantly and decisions are made effectively, which helps organizations respond to incidents faster.
To make their Incident Response better, they analyze past incidents to identify root causes and prevent future recurrences, driving continuous improvement.
Site Reliability Engineering With SLOs & Error Budgets
SleepScore prioritizes tracking Service Level Objectives (SLOs) due to their small DevOps team. This focused approach ensures efficient resource allocation, emphasizing core performance indicators critical for system stability and user experience.
Squadcast's SLO (Service Level Objective) Tracker goes beyond monitoring metrics. It helps organizations build trust and transparency around service reliability. For SleepScore, it meant:
A holistic view and easy data comprehension of service health through SLOs, SLIs (Service Level Indicators), and error budgets enabling proactive service management
Benefits Of Using Squadcast
After integrating Squadcast, Paraig Whelan and his team have achieved swift responsiveness, ensuring the continual improvement of customer expectations. In their day-to-day incident handling process, SleepScore employs Squadcast's features judiciously. This has resulted in various advantages, including:
Streamlined workflows and boosted efficiency through automated tasks and triggered custom actions with Squadcast's webhooks.
Automated scheduling and rotations enable efficient workforce management and reduce scheduling complexity.
Centralized communication enhances collaboration and streamlines Incident Response.
Alert configuration validation ensures accurate and actionable notifications.
The use of Squadcast for SLO tracking enhances SleepScore's ability to maintain high service standards and measure their operational efficiency.
Conclusion: Squadcast Is For DevOps Teams Of All Sizes!
Squadcast proves its versatility by effectively meeting the needs of DevOps teams of all sizes, as demonstrated by SleepScore's experience. The successful integration showcases Squadcast's adaptability, making it a go-to solution for streamlined Incident Management adhering to SRE best practices. Now let’s optimize your team's efficiency. Try Squadcast for free today!
Read more like this
Learn how Matsuri Japon established a formal Incident Response process with Squadcast
