What if we don’t have SLOs yet?

Start with one critical user journey and define a simple availability SLO (e.g., 99.9%). Instrument success vs. failure at the request layer and implement the multi-window burn alert. Don’t wait for a company-wide SLO initiative—prove it on one service and spread.

Won’t this create more alerts?

Done right, you’ll have fewer, better alerts. Multi-window burn rates and saturation trends reduce noise compared to static CPU thresholds. We routinely cut false pages below 10% by eliminating vanity alerts.

Do we need Kubernetes/Argo to benefit?

No. The patterns hold on VMs and serverless. Replace `Argo Rollouts` with your deploy tool (e.g., Spinnaker, CodeDeploy) and use feature flags for fast rollback. The key is gating rollouts with the same metrics you alert on.

Centralized or team-owned playbooks?

Both. Platform defines the template, telemetry taxonomy, and automation interfaces. Teams own their service-specific playbooks and tests. Store them together in Git and enforce via PR review and quarterly drills.

Reliability-observability · Oct 3, 2025 · 9 minute read

Your Incidents Start 30 Minutes Before the Pager: Playbooks That Scale Across Teams

Stop paging on CPU and 500 counts. Build playbooks around leading indicators, wire telemetry to triage, and automate safe rollouts before users feel pain.

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Your Incidents Start 30 Minutes Before the Pager: Playbooks That Scale Across Teams

Key takeaways

Implementation checklist