Briefing
Reliability: an operating rhythm for SLOs and error budgets
SLOs don’t work without a decision cadence. Build a rhythm that makes stability decisions boring and repeatable.
Reliability & Scale 6 min
Why SLO programs stall
Teams define metrics but don’t change decisions. Without cadence, error budgets become dashboards instead of governance.
A minimal operating rhythm
Keep it small, regular, and decision-oriented.
- Weekly reliability review: trend, budget burn, top risks.
- Release policy linked to budget: when to slow down vs accelerate.
- Post-incident learning that produces system changes within two weeks.
Implications
When the rhythm is real, reliability becomes a management system—not a specialist concern.