Part 3 ยท Error budgets
Policy, not politics

Error budgets govern change

The budget turns release arguments into a pre-agreed operating rule.

Budget model

100%
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SLO

If the SLO is 99.9%, the error budget is 0.1% of bad events in the defined window.

Policy outcome

Budget healthy

Ship normally, keep learning, invest proportionally.

Budget exhausted

Slow risky change, prioritize stability work, review release gates.

Measure Track the user-facing SLI.
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Compare See whether the service is burning budget too fast.
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Act Change policy and engineering focus based on that signal.
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