The actors of observability

Like any initiative, there must be a person or a team that is responsible for observability in an organization. In our experience, especially in a large organization, a centralized monitoring or observability team with the right mandate and endorsement from management should be assigned this task. This helps with standardization, fixing ownership, and being responsible for the overall success of the initiative. This doesn’t mean that the observability team is liable for the outcome of the observability process, but for creating the right environment and providing the tools, standards, and processes required by the organization to implement observability via self-service.

Let’s return to the analogy of bringing home a plant and expand on it. Consider an office that allows willing employees to keep a plant in the office as part of a green initiative. A team within the organization will make certain decisions to provide some guidelines on how...