This post is part of a series that will be addressing multiple complex software issues like built-in security, compliance, IAM, cost-to-serve, and more. The goal is to share expertise on building and maintaining better complex software systems: here’s what worked for the author from multiple roles covering various stages of start-ups as well as enterprise environments, on customer-facing SaaS products, as well as internal infrastructure positions.

First off, let’s talk about observability.

A team with strong ownership of the software services they run needs to figure out their own approach to observability. One-size-fits-all solutions are not efficient. This post attempts to strip down complex system software observability to the bare bones, after which the reader would be able to enable better choices in terms of tooling, processes, efforts divested.