Why SLIs Matter More Than SLOs

Short summary

A short opinion piece arguing that Service Level Indicators (SLIs) matter more than Service Level Objectives (SLOs) because the SLI determines whether you're measuring something that reflects real user experience. The author contrasts a meaningless healthcheck-based SLI with a user-initiated checkout SLI, and recommends picking the SLI first and the SLO target second — the reverse of what most teams do.

• •SLIs define what you measure; SLOs define the target — getting the signal right matters more than the number
• •Healthcheck-based SLIs can look healthy while real user-facing functionality is broken
• •Pick the SLI first, then the SLO target; most teams do it backwards

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.