Affordable Observability: Strategy to Implementation

Complex systems need observability, but your team can't afford to instrument everything. This talk shows you how to get the debugging power you need without breaking your budget. You'll learn how to avoid "Not Invented Here" syndrome, over-engineering, and building custom solutions when proven tools already exist. Moving to implementation, we'll cover the "reduce, reuse, recycle" approach to telemetry data. Using practical analogies, you'll understand intelligent data cleanup and sampling strategies. We'll examine why 99% of events are low signal and how to automatically identify and preserve the meaningful ones. The session concludes with an OpenTelemetry implementation and maturity roadmap for you and your team. You'll leave with both strategic thinking tools and specific technical patterns for building observability that actually helps your team debug production, affordably. Whether you're just starting your observability journey or looking to optimise existing investments, this talk provides the frameworks to make smart decisions and implement them cost-effectively.