Hack the CD Observability!

Hack the CD Observability!

If you know me or if you’ve been following my posts, you probably already know that I have talked in the past about CI/CD Observability, at FOSDEM, KCD and in general wherever else I can. This post is about CD Observability specifically, and what we did during a hackathon week in Grafana Labs! But first, let’s talk about the importance of having CD Observability!

Why do I need CD Observability?

Regardless if we are talking about a big/small company or a tech enthusiast, CD (Continuous Delivery/Continuous Deployment) is the alpha and omega when it comes to velocity and stability of deployments as well as reliability of services in production. One needs to observe the deployment of their software and services to ensure robustness and happy customers. Knowing how long it takes for a bug fix to go into production, how many “bounces” it needs to do (go through different services and tools for a successful deployment) and how long does it need for a failure to be identified is critical in a software lifecycle.

Wanna dive deeper?

The importance of CD Observability is without question. I also guess you are already tired of listening to how important DORA metrics are, why do we need to come up with mechanisms to extract DORA metrics and why CD Observability is trickier than it sounds. I could keep blabbing about this, but instead I will just add the blog post we published in Grafana Labs, titled CI/CD observability: Extracting DORA metrics from a CD pipeline.

Working with friends!

All you can see in the blog post linked above, was accomplished during a hackathon week in Grafana Labs, which we do three times per year. Apart from the fact that hackathon projects are actually projects that can flourish inside the company, they help you form teams different than the ones you work with your day-to-day work, meet new people, new cultures and different ways of working compared to yours. For me this time, it wasn’t really the case since for this project I worked with Zack Zehring and Horst Gutmann, who are both in my team and we work together towards the same goal every day. Working with them on a different thing though was quite fun! It was once again proven to me that I am lucky to work with such skilled people and all I can do is get things from them and have fun.

With Zack, we’ve been working together only for a few months now and I enjoy every minute. His deep knowledge about all things Platform is something I envy and also his ability to have a steady hand at all times is top notch. Also reasonably vocal about all the things and a delight to chat with.

With Horst, we have been working together for ~1.5 years now already. He’s just an awesome human being and a freaking powerhouse. He cares about the team and wants to make the (software) world a better place for everyone. I would like to thank him publicly for all the support he has provided to me and I am happy I met him and that I am working with him!

Next steps?

Well, based on the Hackathon Projects and Where to find them post (Harry Potter pun intended ❤️ ) this whole thing may have started as a PoC, but you can use the form below to let us know if you would like to see it happening. Or feel free to reach out to me via LinkedIn.