This standard ensures systems are instrumented to expose meaningful data about their behaviour, enabling teams to detect issues early, understand impact, and make informed decisions.
Aligned to our "Data-Driven Decision-Making" and "Engineering Excellence First" policies, this standard supports proactive monitoring, faster recovery, and better user outcomes. Without it, teams operate in the dark, increasing risk and reducing system trust.
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | Teams rely on intuition to understand system behaviour. Observability is not prioritised. |
| Process & Governance | No standard practice for logging or metrics. Monitoring is reactive and incomplete. |
| Technology & Tools | Minimal instrumentation or alerting in place. Data is not centralised or accessible. |
| Measurement & Metrics | No clear definition or tracking of system behaviour indicators. |
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | Some teams begin using metrics and logs to understand system issues. |
| Process & Governance | Observability is recommended but not consistently applied across services. |
| Technology & Tools | Logs and metrics exist, but formats and tools vary across systems. |
| Measurement & Metrics | Behavioural metrics are available for some services, but without standardisation. |
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | Teams consistently use observability to guide troubleshooting and improvement. |
| Process & Governance | Standard practices define required telemetry and observability patterns. |
| Technology & Tools | Shared tooling provides access to logs, metrics, and traces across systems. |
| Measurement & Metrics | Key indicators of system behaviour are collected and reviewed regularly. |
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | Teams are trained in observability best practices and use them proactively. |
| Process & Governance | Behavioural data feeds into SLOs, SLIs, and risk assessments. |
| Technology & Tools | Dashboards and alerting tools expose performance, error, and flow metrics. |
| Measurement & Metrics | Trends in system health guide prioritisation and drive preventative action. |
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | Observability is embedded in daily work, from design to deployment. |
| Process & Governance | Observability signals shape technical strategy and cross-team investments. |
| Technology & Tools | Systems are instrumented by default, exposing behavioural data at all levels. |
| Measurement & Metrics | Feedback from system behaviour drives resilience, performance, and design improvements. |