o11yfest

Confidence in Chaos; Observability in Testing

There is a difference between applying traditional observability practices and how they are applied for each custom project and scenario.

Everyone wants to use observability because it can reduce time between a problem and a solution, but there is a difference between applying traditional observability practices and how they are applied for each custom project and scenario. Narmatha Bala is a Senior Software Engineering Manager in the Commercial Software Engineering (CSE) team and runs the Observability chapter of the CSE Engineering Playbook, a best practices guide put together by development teams to accelerate the sharing of how best to work together, to quickly transfer learnings across teams with customers, particularly with new technologies and projects as a way to enable customers to carry the work forward and continue the development. CSE is a global engineering organization that works directly with the largest companies and not-for-profits in the world to tackle their most significant technical challenges.

In this talk, Narmatha will share her experiences in instilling Observability best practices with engineers who use best utilize observability in applications versus engineers that think they do. She will cover why actionable failures are a good thing in system design, how to best define Service Level Agreements and Objectives (SLAs, SLOs), and where monitoring fits into the process. This talk is best suited for intermediate practitioners who want to improve their testing by improving their observability practices.

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