Define meaningful health signals
Track workflow completion, latency, freshness, quality checks, and downstream acknowledgments. Separate system health from business performance: a successful run can still produce an unusable dataset.
- ✓ Run identifiers and event records
- ✓ Freshness and completion checks
- ✓ Actionable alerts with owners
Make investigation efficient
Connect an alert to the relevant inputs, action history, error, and recovery instructions. Avoid logging sensitive payloads unnecessarily and establish retention appropriate to the workflow.
- ✓ Document the evidence and owner behind each decision.
- ✓ Agree acceptance criteria before implementation begins.
Scope and delivery decisions
Alert routing and support coverage depend on the agreed operating model. Observability exposes failures; it does not eliminate provider outages.
- ✓ Confirm system access, dependencies, and data handling during discovery.
- ✓ Receive a scoped recommendation with responsibilities and verification steps.