Error budget report — checkout SLO at 99.71% for the window; budget exhausted; big feature launch scheduled next Tuesday
Out of budget, a week before launch
You're the SRE representing reliability in the weekly release planning meeting.
Briefing
The error budget policy (agreed last quarter) says: when the budget is exhausted, feature releases pause and reliability work takes priority. The 'one-click reorder' launch is next Tuesday, with a marketing campaign already booked.
Your shift
Decide before you look. Each choice is locked once made; the next decision unlocks after it. There's no perfect path in real incidents either, only better and worse judgement under uncertainty.
The feature team lead: 'The policy is guidance, right? This launch is too important to delay.'
What's your position?
Debrief
Error budgets work when both sides treat them as a shared decision tool. Apply the policy, then solve the problem together: prioritise the fix that spent the budget, reduce the launch's blast radius, and improve the policy based on experience.
The postmortem
Blameless postmortem · draft
Summary. Planning outcome: launch proceeds as a staged rollout after the reliability fix that consumed most of the budget.
Impact. N/A — planning session.
Timeline
- WedBudget exhausted; release planning discussion
- FriConnection-pool fix deployed
- Tue–ThuFeature rolled out 5% → 25% → 100% with automated rollback
Root cause. N/A
Contributing factors
- Two incidents from one unfixed connection-pool bug consumed ~80% of the budget.
Action items
- processClarify error budget policy: definitions, exception process, staged-launch rulessre + product
- mitigateAutomated rollback on burn rate for flag-gated launchesplatform
The practice behind it
Error budget policies
A written agreement, made in advance by product and engineering, about what happens at different budget levels: normal velocity when there's plenty left, extra caution as it shrinks, reliability focus when it's gone. Its value is that the decision was made calmly, before the pressure of a specific launch. Use it to start conversations, not to end them.
Your turn
Which work should count as 'reliability work' when the budget is exhausted?
Interview questions
What happens when a service exhausts its error budget?