Anti-patterns for continuous monitoring

• Blame culture: Encouraging a culture where individuals are blamed for errors or failures can deter open communication, and the collaborative diagnosis of issues. In a blame culture, team members may hide or underreport issues for fear of retribution. Instead, foster a culture of shared responsibility where failures are seen as opportunities for learning and improvement. Encourage open discussions and retrospectives to understand the root causes and to find ways to prevent similar issues in the future.

• Overlooking derived metrics: Relying solely on surface-level metrics without deriving deeper insights can lead to unaddressed issues and potential service disruptions. Ensure that monitoring includes a comprehensive understanding of system performance by analyzing metrics in depth, such as distinguishing between latencies based on query size or categorizing error types. Use techniques like anomaly detection and consider metrics like trimmed means for latency to reveal patterns obscured by averages.

• Inadequate monitoring coverage: Not monitoring every critical system or frequently reviewing your monitoring strategy can lead to undetected issues or performance degradation. Regularly assess and update monitoring coverage, ensuring that all systems and applications are being observed. A symptom of this anti-pattern is "no dogs barking," where the absence of expected alerts or metrics itself can indicate an issue.

• Noisy and unactionable alarms: If alarms frequently sound without actionable cause, trust in the alerting system diminishes, risking slower response times or overlooked genuine alerts. Ensure that alerts are both actionable and significant by continuously evaluating the outcomes they lead to. Implement mechanisms to mute false positives and adjust overly sensitive alarms.