150_open_questions.md

150 Open questions:

1. Failure Tolerance

(Failover, Global work scheduling, Failed task management):

1. How is failover handling implemented within the system?
2. What global work scheduling mechanisms are in place to ensure fault tolerance?
3. How does the system manage failed tasks, and what retry mechanisms are in place?
4. How are dependencies between services managed to minimize the impact of failures?
5. What measures are in place to ensure graceful degradation of service instead of complete failure?
6. Can the system operate in degraded mode, allowing a partial set of features to remain operational during failures?
7. What disaster recovery plans and policies are in place within the organization?
8. How are backups and data replication strategies implemented to ensure data consistency during failover?
9. Do you monitor and measure failover scenarios, generating metrics for analysis and improvement?
10. Is there a documented process for testing and validating failover strategies and recovery plans?

2. Scalability

(Automatic scaling of available worker pool, Automatic dynamic resharding to effect balanced load across the pool, Load shedding/task prioritization):

1. How does the system handle automatic scaling of the available worker pool to address workload fluctuations?
2. How are resources allocated dynamically to ensure balanced load distribution across the worker pool?
3. What strategies for load shedding/task prioritization are implemented in the system?
4. How does the system handle scheduled and unscheduled peak loads?
5. How are latency and response time tolerances maintained during periods of high workload?
6. Does the architecture support horizontal and vertical scaling, and what mechanisms are in place for each?
7. How is elasticity tested and validated to ensure the scalability of the system?
8. What tools or services are used for observing and managing resource utilization and auto-scaling?
9. How are performance bottlenecks identified and addressed as part of scalability improvements?
10. How do you anticipate and plan future growth in system capacity and resource requirements?

3. Monitoring & Debugging

(Debugging tools and capabilities, Dashboards and visualizations):

1. What monitoring and debugging tools are in place to maintain visibility into system performance and health?
2. How are dashboards and visualizations utilized to enable quick identification of issues and bottlenecks?
3. Are monitoring and debugging capabilities easily accessible and consistent across services and environments?
4. Does the organization have standards for monitoring, alerting, and observability of its services?
5. What set of monitoring data is collected, and how is it used to make informed decisions about the system's performance and stability?
6. How do you ensure the monitoring data is accurate and reliable, and how often is it updated?
7. How is user experience monitoring (e.g., Real User Monitoring) incorporated into the overall monitoring strategy?
8. What level of granularity is provided in the debugging and tracing of requests and transactions across the system?
9. How do you monitor the health of third-party dependencies and their impact on the system?
10. How is the monitoring data utilized in incident response and post-mortem analyses?

4. Ease of Implementation & Transparency

(Discoverability, Code, Documentation and best practices):

1. How easily can new components or services be introduced into the system?
2. What practices are in place to maintain code readability, modularity, and maintainability?
3. How well-documented are the APIs, libraries, and services used within the organization?
4. Are best practices established and followed consistently across the organization?
5. How is onboarding and training for new team members facilitated using documentation and resources?
6. How do you ensure alignment between teams on coding standards, best practices, and process documentation?
7. Do you have a searchable, centralized knowledge base or wiki for sharing and maintaining documentation on internal processes and tools?
8. Are feedback loops and continuous improvement processes in place to enhance documentation quality and maintain organizational learning?
9. How are system changes, updates, and deprecations communicated effectively within the organization?
10. How do you evaluate and facilitate the adoption of emerging technologies, processes, and practices within the organization?

5. Unit & Integration Testing

(Unit testing framework, Ease of configuration, Support for integration testing frameworks):

1. What unit testing frameworks and tools are used within the organization, and how are they integrated into the development process?
2. How easily can these testing frameworks and tools be configured and maintained to meet specific requirements?
3. What support for integration testing frameworks is available, and how is it utilized to validate end-to-end functionality?
4. What percentage of code is covered by unit tests and integration tests?
5. How do you ensure the quality of test code, and how is it reviewed and maintained?
6. How is test data management handled, including the generation, validation, and storage of test data?
7. How are edge cases, failure scenarios, and performance constraints tested through unit and integration tests?
8. How are tests executed and monitored as part of the CI/CD pipelines, and how is feedback provided to developers?
9. How is test automation implemented and maintained to ensure consistent quality across the system?
10. How do you prioritize testing efforts and resource allocation based on risk, complexity, and impact?

6. Incident Management

(Incident detection, Alerting, Incident response plans, Postmortems):

1. How are incidents detected quickly and accurately to minimize the impact on users?
2. What alerting mechanisms are in place to notify relevant stakeholders and responders of incidents?
3. How comprehensive and actionable are the incident response plans, and are they easily accessible during a crisis?
4. How are incident response teams structured and what roles, responsibilities, and escalation paths are established within the organization?
5. How do you ensure an efficient handover between responders and communication among all relevant stakeholders during incident resolution?
6. What incident management tools and platforms are utilized to track, coordinate, and communicate during incident response efforts?
7. How are incidents prioritized based on their impact, urgency, and resource constraints?
8. How are postmortem analyses conducted, and what lessons learned are documented and shared for improvement purposes?
9. What measures are in place to prevent recurrence and mitigate the impact of similar incidents in the future?
10. How do you continuously evaluate and enhance the incident management process based on real-world experiences and feedback?

7. Performance & Latency

(Performance monitoring, Latency and throughput optimization, Bottleneck identification and remediation):

1. How is system performance monitored and measured, capturing metrics such as response time, throughput, and resource utilization?
2. What mechanisms are used to optimize latency and throughput to ensure a satisfactory user experience?
3. How are performance bottlenecks identified, and what remediation strategies are employed to address them?
4. Are performance benchmarks and targets established for various components of the system?
5. How are performance-related issues triaged and prioritized, taking into account user impact and business objectives?
6. How does the organization devise and implement performance optimization strategies across the system?
7. How do you ensure the continuous monitoring of performance metrics, generating insights for proactive improvement?
8. How are performance-based tests and stress tests incorporated into the development and release cycles?
9. How do you monitor the impact of third-party dependencies and services on overall system performance and latency?
10. What training and resources are provided to developers and operations teams to help them identify and address performance issues?

8. Security & Compliance

(Vulnerability management, Secure coding practices, Data privacy and regulatory compliance):

1. How are vulnerabilities identified, reported, and prioritized within the organization?
2. What secure coding practices are followed to ensure the development of secure software?
3. How do you ensure the handling of sensitive data complies with data privacy regulations and standards?
4. How do you maintain compliance with industry-specific regulations and standards (e.g., PCI-DSS, GDPR, HIPAA)?
5. Are regular security audits and assessments conducted to identify areas of improvement?
6. What security training and resources are provided to developers and other team members?
7. How do you manage access control, authentication, and authorization across the system and its components?
8. What incident response plans are in place for security-related incidents, such as data breaches or vulnerabilities?
9. How do you ensure secure communications and data transmission across the system and its components?
10. How are security updates and patches managed and deployed to minimize risk?

9. Capacity Planning

(Resource forecasting, Proactive capacity adjustments, Budget management and cost optimization):

1. How do you forecast resource requirements for the short term and long term?
2. What proactive capacity adjustments are made based on usage patterns and forecasts?
3. How do you manage budgets and optimize costs related to infrastructure and resource usage?
4. How do you balance performance, cost, and capacity when making capacity planning decisions?
5. What capacity planning tools and techniques are used to predict growth and resource needs?
6. How do you incorporate lessons learned from previous capacity planning efforts to improve future forecasts?
7. Are capacity plans reviewed and updated regularly, adjusting for changes in the business and the technology landscape?
8. How do you allocate resources horizontally and vertically to optimize capacity management?
9. What processes are in place to analyze capacity-related incidents and learn from them?
10. How do you evaluate and plan for the potential impact of emerging technologies and trends on your capacity planning efforts?

10. Infrastructure as Code

(Infrastructure automation, Orchestration tools, Configuration management):

1. How is infrastructure automation implemented within the organization?
2. What orchestration tools and platforms are used to automate infrastructure management, scaling, and deployment tasks?
3. How is configuration management of infrastructure components handled, and what tools are used?
4. How do you ensure consistency and repeatability across environments using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices?
5. What version control and change management processes are applied to infrastructure code and configurations?
6. How is infrastructure code tested and validated before being applied in production environments?
7. How do you ensure infrastructure code and configuration complies with security and compliance requirements?
8. What training and resources are provided to developers and operations teams to adopt and manage IaC practices effectively?
9. How do you monitor and enforce infrastructure policies, standards, and best practices within the organization?
10. What disaster recovery and backup strategies are in place for infrastructure components, and how are they managed through IaC practices?

11. Continuous Integration & Deployment

(CI/CD pipelines, Build automation, Automated testing and validation):

1. How are CI/CD pipelines implemented and maintained within the organization?
2. What build automation tools and platforms are used to streamline the build, test, and deployment process?
3. How are automated testing and validation integrated into the CI/CD pipelines?
4. How do you ensure environment parity during the continuous integration and deployment process?
5. Are there built-in quality gates within the pipeline to prevent unstable or insecure changes from being propagated through the pipeline?
6. How do you manage and monitor CI/CD pipelines, identifying issues and potential improvements?
7. What level of visibility and access is provided to team members for the CI/CD pipelines, enabling them to track build status, test results, and deployments?
8. How do you roll back deployments and manage roll-forward strategies in case of issues or failures within the CI/CD process?
9. What methods are in place to deploy features gradually, such as feature flags or canary releases?
10. How do you incorporate feedback and lessons learned from the CI/CD process into ongoing development and operations activities?

12. SLOs and SLAs

(Defining SLOs and SLAs, Monitoring and reporting, Meeting reliability targets):

1. How are SLOs and SLAs defined, taking into account both technical requirements and business objectives?
2. What mechanisms are in place for monitoring and reporting on SLOs and SLAs?
3. How do you ensure that the system meets the established reliability targets outlined in the SLOs and SLAs?
4. How are SLOs and SLAs communicated and understood by all team members and stakeholders?
5. What processes are in place for reviewing and updating SLOs and SLAs regularly to ensure alignment with business objectives and user expectations?
6. How do you handle remediation and escalation of issues affecting SLOs and SLAs?
7. How do you balance feature development with reliability and maintainability requirements to meet SLOs and SLAs?
8. How do you prioritize and allocate resources to address reliability issues and meet SLOs and SLAs?
9. What visibility and transparency are provided to stakeholders regarding SLO and SLA performance and compliance?
10. How do you use SLO and SLA data to inform decisions and improve system reliability and performance?

13. Cloud-Native Architecture

(Microservice architecture adoption, Containerization, Orchestration using Kubernetes or similar platforms):

1. How is the adoption of microservice architecture being pursued within the organization to enhance scalability and maintainability?
2. What containerization strategies and tools are in use to streamline deployment and management of applications and services?
3. How do you leverage container orchestration platforms, such as Kubernetes, to manage and scale cloud-native applications?
4. How do you manage communication and dependencies between microservices, ensuring resiliency and fault tolerance?
5. How do you handle monitoring, logging, and tracing in a cloud-native environment, ensuring visibility and observability across services?
6. What strategies and patterns are utilized for data and state management within a distributed, cloud-native architecture?
7. How do you address security and compliance concerns within the context of a cloud-native architecture?
8. What processes and tools are used to ensure consistent deployment, management, and configuration across cloud-native environments?
9. How do you assess and optimize performance and resource utilization in a cloud-native context?
10. What training and resources are provided to enable team members to effectively design, develop, and manage cloud-native applications?

14. Cross-Functional Collaboration

(Communication between SRE and Development teams, Shared ownership and responsibility for reliability, Collaborative problem-solving):

1. How do you facilitate communication and collaboration between SRE and Development teams within the organization?
2. What mechanisms are in place to promote shared ownership and responsibility for reliability across teams?
3. How do you foster a collaborative problem-solving approach to address reliability and performance issues?
4. What channels are available for cross-functional teams to exchange knowledge, discuss challenges, and share best practices?
5. How are goals and objectives for reliability and performance shared and aligned across team boundaries?
6. What processes are in place to ensure ongoing engagement and interaction between SRE and Development teams during planning, development, release, and operations phases?
7. How do you measure and evaluate the effectiveness of cross-functional collaboration in the context of SRE activities?
8. What tools and platforms are utilized to enable seamless collaboration, information sharing, and decision-making between teams?
9. How do you encourage a culture of continuous learning and experimentation across SRE and Development teams?
10. How do you identify gaps and opportunities for improvement in cross-functional collaboration and take action to address them?

15. Culture & Organizational Alignment

(Embracing a blameless culture, Fostering a continuous improvement mindset, Alignment of goals and priorities across teams):

1. How does the organization embrace and promote a blameless culture during incident reviews and postmortems?
2. How do you foster a continuous improvement mindset across teams, encouraging learning from both successes and failures?
3. How do you ensure alignment of goals and priorities between technical and business-focused teams within the organization?
4. What mechanisms are in place for shared accountability and ownership for system reliability and performance?
5. How do you promote feedback loops and open communication channels for sharing insights, lessons learned, and best practices across teams?
6. What change management processes and training are in place to enable teams to adapt to new processes, tools, and technologies related to SRE?
7. How do you measure and evaluate the impact of cultural and organizational factors on SRE adoption and effectiveness?
8. What forums or events are in place to foster a sense of community and shared purpose among team members and promote cross-functional learning and collaboration?
9. How do you recognize and celebrate achievements and milestones related to SRE initiatives and improvements?
10. How do you ensure that the organization's culture and values align with SRE principles and inspire a shared commitment to reliability and performance improvement?