I Can Sell You Observability, But You Can't Buy It
summary
Argues that observability is as much observability is practice and culture as it is tools, and that buying dashboards and a metrics/logs/trace stack (author cites buying a product and mentions LightStep and Google’s Dapper) does not fix team behavior. Shows Google increasing Dapper usage by integrating traces into existing workflows, and uses an aviation example where analog dials beat digital tapes for situational awareness. Gives a concrete evaluation rubric: statistical fidelity, cardinality, volume, horizon and demands automated correlation and user-impact measurement to triage regressions.
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chapters (6)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:11Observability
- 3:58What you can buy
- 8:16Selling culture
- 14:05Evaluating observability
- 19:10Conclusion
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