The Map Is Not the Territory - How SLOs Lead Us Astray, and What We Can Do about It

Explore the limitations and potential pitfalls of Service Level Objectives (SLOs) in this 45-minute conference talk from SREcon19 Europe/Middle East/Africa. Delve into the complexities of modern services and how they challenge the simplifying assumptions underlying SLOs. Discover how these assumptions can lead to systematic failures and poor decision-making. Learn to identify scenarios where SLOs may produce unexpected or incorrect results. Gain valuable insights into best practices for constructing robust SLOs that account for the intricacies of complex service behaviors. Equip yourself with techniques to enhance the effectiveness of SLO-based processes in prioritizing reliability, communicating expectations, and synchronizing priorities across specialized teams.