Observability has been getting a lot of attention recently. What started out as a fairly obscure technical term from the annals of control theory has been generating buzz of late, because it relates to a set of problems that more and more people are having, and that set of problems isn’t well-addressed by our robust and mature ecosystem of monitoring tools and best practices.

This document discusses the history, concept, goals, and approaches to achieving observability in today’s software industry, with an eye to the future benefits and potential evolution of the software development practice as a whole.