The Lost Art of Control: When Observability Masks Our Reliability Crisis

"The Lost Art of Control" challenges tech's obsession with observability tools while missing what truly matters - control. Through parallels with nuclear plants and manufacturing, it shows how focusing on monitoring everything instead of controlling what matters has created a reliability crisis in modern IT operations.

The Lost Art of Control: When Observability Masks Our Reliability Crisis (5 min read)

5 min read

16 December 2024

In 1911, when Frederick Taylor published "The Principles of Scientific Management," he probably didn't imagine his ideas would be relevant to managing cloud infrastructure over a century later. Yet here we are, spending millions on observability tools while missing the fundamental principles that manufacturing has perfected over decades.

A nuclear power plant manages over 50,000 interconnected components, any of which could trigger a catastrophic failure. Yet, these plants maintain uptimes that put our "five nines" to shame. They don't achieve this by adding more sensors or buying more monitoring tools. They achieve it through ruthless focus on what matters.

Let that sink in.

A nuclear power plant never says, "Let's maximize output first and add safety monitoring later." A pharmaceutical plant doesn't say, "Let's accelerate production and figure out quality control when we have time."

Yet in software, we do exactly this. Every day.

The Manufacturing Golden Rule

Manufacturing's hierarchy is crystal clear:

Safety First - Non-negotiable
Quality Always - No compromises
Output Only When 1 & 2 Are Met

Why? Because they understand a fundamental truth: Unsafe output isn't output—it's waste. Poor quality production isn't productivity—it's destruction of value. More importantly, it erodes the very foundation of operational excellence: trust.

The Software Services Paradox

Meanwhile, in software services:

Ship Fast ("Move Fast and Break Things")
Add Observability to Watch Things Break
Talk About Reliability When Things Break Too Often

We've inverted the pyramid entirely. We treat reliability as a feature to be added, observability as a band-aid for poor reliability, and then wonder why our systems remain fragile.

The Complexity Myth

"But our microservices architecture is too complex," we say, as we justify spending millions on observability tools. Really? More complex than a nuclear reactor managing critical nuclear fission while preventing meltdowns? More complex than chemical plants handling volatile substances at precise temperatures and pressures?

These industries manage complexity not by observing everything, but by understanding what truly matters. They don't celebrate having more sensors; they celebrate having the right ones.

The Stark Reality

Here's what's happening in our industry:

Organizations spending millions on observability while basic service coverage remains incomplete
Teams drowning in alerts while critical systems fail silently
Dashboards showing everything while telling us nothing
"Advanced observability" tools being bought while fundamental reliability practices are ignored

Consider these numbers:

A typical enterprise uses 4-7 observability tools
Less than 40% of critical services have comprehensive alert coverage (ALCOM score)
Average alert response times exceed 30 minutes
Tool sprawl increases by 22% yearly
Alert fatigue causes 70% of incidents to be initially mishandled

The Cost of Our Approach

Consider this stark contrast:

A manufacturing plant allocates 20-30% of its operations budget to quality control and safety
Most software organizations allocate <5% to reliability engineering
Manufacturing embeds quality checks in every step
Software treats reliability as an afterthought

The results?

Manufacturing defect rates: Parts per million
Software incident rates: Multiple per day

The Trust Erosion

When a manufacturing plant has quality issues:

Production stops immediately
Root causes are identified
Processes are adjusted
Controls are strengthened
Trust is maintained through rigorous response

When software services fail:

We add more monitoring
We create more dashboards
We hire more people to watch dashboards
Trust erodes with each incident
Technical debt compounds

First Principles Matter

Manufacturing starts with:

Safety parameters that cannot be violated
Quality standards that must be met
Control points that must be monitored
Clear ownership of each control point
Defined responses to deviations

Software often starts with:

Feature delivery targets
Growth metrics
Performance goals
Reliability as a "nice to have"
Observability as a cure-all

For Leaders Reading This

Ask yourself:

Do you know your critical control points?
Is reliability designed in or bolted on?
Are you measuring what matters or just measuring everything?
Does your team structure reflect your reliability priorities?
Are you building trust or eroding it with each incident?

The Path Forward

This isn't just another technical article. It's a call to fundamentally rethink how we build and operate software services. The question isn't whether we can monitor everything. The question is: Can we control what matters?

Join us next week as we explore "The Lost Art of Control Points: What IT Can Learn from Manufacturing Floors."

Because in the end, watching things fail better isn't the same as making them work reliably.

Part 1 of a 3-part series on bringing manufacturing reliability principles to modern IT operations.

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About the author

Mohan Narayanaswamy Natarajan is a technology executive and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in operations and systems management. As co-founder and CEO of Temperstack, he focuses on Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) process automation. His career includes leadership roles at ITC, Inmobi, Pinelabs, Practo & Amazon, Mohan has also worked as a consultant at The Boston consulting group (BCG), He has experience in implementing large-scale systems, leading teams, and establishing business resilience mechanisms across various industries.

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