Keynote - Abby BANGSER: Observability: What, why and how (on a shoestring budget)

Observability is a mix of art and science. There is a science to how you shape, collect, and visualise telemetry from your complex software systems. A few characteristics of this telemetry, or more simply data, can have an outsized impact on the experience users will have when supporting and interrogating it. At the same time, there is an art to collecting data in a way that balances protecting user privacy, managing efficient budgets, and still supporting product and engineering needs.
The reason we talk about observability is because building any software requires feedback loops to understand the success or failure of your features. Building software that enables its users to in turn build their own bespoke software adds a secondary level and new requirements for observability.
In this talk, Abby will dive deep into the whys behind the characteristics of telemetry which best support observable systems before bringing everyone on her journey building Kratix, a Free and Open Source (FOSS) framework for building bespoke internal platforms. Instead of painting the rosy (and unrealistic) picture of an ideally instrumented code base with the perfect data visualisations, Abby will share the story of her journey at a seed stage startup and how a test conscious team balanced the cost and benefit of building in quality attributes early.