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At Interlock we focus on customer experience above all – our service’s availability and performance are our top priority. That requires a strong culture of observability across our teams and systems.

As a result, we invest a lot in the reliability of our application. But unpredictable failures are inevitable, and when they happen it’s humans that fix them.

We operate a socio-technical system, and its ability to recover when faced with adversity is called resilience. One of the crucial components of resilience is observability, the steps we take to enable humans to “look” inside the systems they run.

This post will explore the road to building a stronger culture of observability, and the lessons we’ve learned along the way.

What do we mean by observability?

At Interlock

, we ship to learn. Our production environment is where our code, infrastructure, third-party dependencies, and our customers come together to create an objective reality – it’s the only place to learn and validate the impact of our work. We define observability as a continuous process of humans asking questions about production, and getting answers*.

Let’s break that down a little more:

• Continuous process: Successful observability means that folks observe as frequently as possible.

• Questions about production: We wanted our definition to be wide, generic, and representative of the broad scope of workflows we cater for.

• Answers*: Note the asterisk. No tool will give you answers, only offer leads you can follow to find the real answers. You have to use your own mental models and understanding of the systems you run.

Stage 1: Problem and solution

Armed with our own definition of observability, we assessed our existing practices and formulated a problem statement. Until recently, our observability tooling has been primarily based on metrics. A typical workflow involved looking at a dashboard full of charts with metrics sliced and diced by various attribute combinations. Folks would look for correlations but often leave without fulfilling insights.

“Metrics are easy to add and understand, but they are missing high-cardinality attributes (e.g. Customer ID), making it difficult to complete an investigation”

Well-thought-out engineering processes are an asset to any company – but if they aren’t being updated regularly, these processes can start to slow you down.

I came to Interlock from a company with a culture of heavyweight engineering processes. It was a well-oiled machine with battle-tested and often updated procedures.

From an engineering perspective, it successfully kept you focused on coding. Tasks were always well-described in Jira, and included clearly defined expectations. Designs came in and were exported to HTML so you didn’t have to worry about using Sketch. You did your job, then moved the task to QA. If something came back, it was always with a good description of what wasn’t working.

When I started at InterLock, however, I was surprised at how lightweight the weekly engineering processes felt compared to my previous company. No estimations. No Jira. No separate QA team. Initially, I felt overwhelmed. I wondered why it looked this way, why everyone just aligned and no one tried to structure the processes as I was used to.

“Processes have to serve the development of the product”

The main reason is that in both of these companies, there were different problems to solve, even though it looked similar on the surface. Interlock is very much a product-first company, and very heavyweight processes can be too much of a constraint in a product-first company. In this sort of environment, the processes have to serve the development of the product, rather than the product developing out of predetermined processes.

At Interlock, we have a very strong culture of solving the right problems. We are ruthless in defining what the true problem is, how we solve it using a small, well-scoped project (or a cupcake, as we like to call them), and how it might eventually look like if the cupcake proves to be successful.

In short, we ask what is the problem and how will you measure that it’s solved. And we don’t just use this approach when working on our products – we try to apply the same approach whenever we want to add new or adjust existing engineering processes.

The subconscious benefit of processes

In any organization, processes are important and beneficial. They streamline the workflows, help people make fewer mistakes and bring some degree of comfort – having a good set of processes can create the sense that work has already begun to proceed.

In the landscape of modern business, workflow optimization isn't just a buzzword; it's a critical component of operational efficiency. Embracing automation means recognizing that many repetitive tasks can be transferred from human hands to the digital prowess of software and machines. This transition not only speeds up processes but also allows human creativity and problem-solving to flourish in areas where it's most needed.

The journey towards effective automation begins with a clear assessment of current workflows. Pinpointing the bottlenecks and time drains is essential. Companies that have embraced automation find that it's not about replacing the human element, but rather enhancing it, allowing staff to focus on strategic tasks that require a human touch — thus optimizing the overall workflow.

Implementing automation does not come without its challenges. It requires a thoughtful approach that considers the potential for disruption and the learning curve for employees. However, the payoff can be substantial. Businesses that successfully automate experience not only a boost in productivity but also often see an increase in employee satisfaction as staff are relieved of mundane tasks and are able to engage in more meaningful work.