Simplified process of setting first SLIs and SLOs for your product and underlying technical stack.

<aside> ℹ️ The framework is also available as digital whiteboard template (FigJam).

Read full article to get more insights here: https://www.practicalengineering.management/p/intro-to-sla-slo-and-sli

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The 4-steps of setting SLIs/SLOs

Answer these questions to frame your problem:

• [ ] 1) Define user journey
  • [ ] Attach the screenshot of product feature you want to cover.
  • [ ] Draw sequence diagram for user journey. You can use Mermaid.js for that.
  • [ ] List critical events of the flow.
• [ ] 2) Pick your SLIs
  • [ ] Based on user journey pick 3-5 SLIs for the flow.
  • [ ] Use general SLIs as inspiration (listed in section below) or use more specific ones (e.g. Core Web Vitals for Web; Crash-free or Battery usage for mobile; Coverage or Data Correctness in Data Processing
• [ ] 3) Define how you’ll measure SLIs
  • [ ] Depending on selected SLI / platform, define how you’ll implement the measurement. Use example ways of measuring SLI (listed in section below)
• [ ] 4) Define your SLOs
  • [ ] Pick target for your SLI based on business need (balance cost of achieving it vs what’s “good enough” for customers
  • [ ] Set time window for the measurement

Your SLIs and SLOs

1) Define user journey 🥾

<aside> 💡 If list of bullet points is not enough, you can paste also a Sequence Diagram, which you can generate e.g. by Mermaid.js.

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User journey:

• ...
• ...
• ...

2) Pick your SLIs 📊

<aside> 💡 Example SLIs: Availability, Latency, Quality, Throughput, Data Freshness.

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