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Showing posts from January, 2024

Monitoring and Observability

In this post I am going to talk about monitoring and observability. Now what are monitoring and observability? Monitoring is defined as….. "to watch and check a situation carefully for a period of time in order to discover something about it" From <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/monitoring> Observability is defined as….. "to watch carefully the way something happens or the way someone does something, especially in order to learn more about it" From <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/observe?q=Observing> So the main difference between the 2 is that one is around checking to discover something whilst the other is about watching something in order to learn more about it. Why are both important? They are both important as they can tell us different things about a system and can provide us with information that can feed into decisions and actions that can be made both now and in the future to improve software quality as

Fast Feedback

Feedback is important. In fact feedback is what helps us improve and enables us to make informed decisions at the correct time. For example imagine you are driving a car in icy weather and the steering goes light. This feedback tells you that you need to take action as it is likely your car has started to slide. So feedback can help us take action to keep us safe and without it the human race would still be stuck in the dark ages. Now typically you will be asked for feedback in the following types of situations: Feedback on a training course Feedback on colleges for the appraisal process However, there is more to feedback than that. This post will talk about why feedback is important, the effects of slow feedback and how if this feedback was quicker how it would lead to better outcomes. What is feedback? Here’s the definition from Wikpedia: “information about reactions to a product, a person's performance of a task, etc. which is used as a basis for improvement.” So feedback is all