If your service has exceeded the error budget, what is the recommended action before a product launch?

When a service's error budget has been exceeded, it indicates that the service has not met its reliability goals and poses a risk to the users and the overall system performance. In this context, negotiating a launch freeze with the product team is the most appropriate action to take. This step is essential because launching new features or updates while the error budget is exceeded can further compromise the system's stability and potentially degrade the user experience.

A launch freeze allows the engineering and operations teams to prioritize addressing reliability issues, ensuring that the service meets its performance expectations before new code is introduced. It provides a crucial opportunity to focus on resolving existing problems, performing necessary improvements, and maintaining overall system health.

While notifying the team about the error budget limitations is important, it does not take action to mitigate the risk associated with launching under these circumstances. Requesting additional error budget or reallocating budgets could lead to a misunderstanding of the service's actual reliability needs and may ultimately result in overlooking critical stability concerns. Therefore, a launch freeze is the most prudent approach to safeguard service integrity and user satisfaction before proceeding with a product launch.