How do I prioritize which playbook to run first?

Start with breached SLOs and the biggest error-budget burners. Use tracing to confirm the actual critical path, then pick the playbook that addresses the slowest span (API tail latency vs DB vs cache vs queue).

What if we don’t have tracing yet?

Add OpenTelemetry SDKs and run an agent/collector sidecar. You can start with sampling at 1–5% to keep costs down. Without traces, rely on high-cardinality logs and service mesh metrics, but expect slower iterations.

How do we prove the optimizations worked?

Define acceptance checks upfront: p99 target, error rate, and saturation thresholds. Run a controlled load test (k6/wrk), compare pre/post dashboards, and attach snapshots to the PR. Keep a ‘perf-changes.md’ ledger in the repo.

Guides · Nov 3, 2025 · 10 minute read

The Performance Playbooks That Actually Move the Needle: Tail Latency, N+1 DB, Cache Storms, and Backpressure

Stop guessing. Standardize how your team hunts and kills the bottlenecks that blow up SLOs and burn cash.

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The Performance Playbooks That Actually Move the Needle: Tail Latency, N+1 DB, Cache Storms, and Backpressure

Key takeaways

Implementation checklist