Failing forward fast

Observability is a multi-faceted topic. It can mean different things to different teams. Traditionally, observability has focused on monitoring infrastructure. However, with our serverless systems, we are delegating that responsibility to the cloud provider. This means that we can use observability at a higher order and apply it to help us drive innovation and deliver business value. In other words, observability can help us drive down lead time and move faster.

In Chapter 1, Architecting for Innovation, we dissected lead time so that we can understand what causes it to increase. For example, teams will naturally put on the breaks and slow down when they fear that a change could inadvertently break another part of the system. This is why we build bulkheads throughout our systems.

Teams will also slow down when they do not have enough information about the health and performance of the system. No process is perfect. We cannot eliminate honest human error...