What proactive measure can be taken to maintain service reliability before a major incident occurs?

Developing an appropriate error budget policy is a proactive measure that is critical for maintaining service reliability before a major incident occurs. An error budget acts as a quantitative framework that balances the need for innovation and new feature development with the necessity of maintaining system reliability. By establishing an error budget, teams can track the acceptable level of errors or downtime they are willing to tolerate in their services.

This approach allows organizations to prioritize reliability effectively while also enabling teams to make informed decisions about when to release new features. When the error budget is consumed (meaning incidents or service outages have exceeded the acceptable limits), the team can shift focus toward improving reliability rather than deploying new features. This, in turn, helps to reduce the likelihood of major incidents occurring due to excessive changes being introduced into the system without adequate reliability measures in place.

Adopting a solid error budget policy fosters a culture of accountability surrounding service reliability, ensuring that teams are consistently aligned on the importance of maintaining service levels while pursuing development goals.