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Error Budget

A Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) concept that defines the maximum amount of time a technical system can fail without contractual consequences.

Categorydev

Overview

An error budget is the difference between 100% availability and the Service Level Objective (SLO). It provides a clear metric for balancing the need for system stability with the desire for rapid feature development.

How it Works

  • If the budget is full, the team can take more risks and deploy new features.
  • If the budget is exhausted, the team must stop new releases and focus on improving reliability.

Benefits

  • Aligns incentives between developers (who want speed) and operations (who want stability).
  • Provides a data-driven way to prioritize technical debt and reliability work.