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Standard : Teams are alerted when feedback loops are broken

Purpose and Strategic Importance

This standard ensures teams are alerted whenever critical feedback loops-like monitoring, user feedback channels, or metrics-stop providing insights. It prevents blind spots that delay detection of issues or drift from goals.

Aligned to our "Fast Feedback Loops" policy, this standard protects against silent failures in telemetry and communication. Without it, problems go unnoticed, causing longer recovery times and lost opportunities to adapt.

Strategic Impact

  • Improved consistency and quality across teams
  • Reduced operational friction and delivery risks
  • Stronger ownership and autonomy in technical decision-making
  • More inclusive and sustainable engineering culture

Risks of Not Having This Standard

  • Slower time-to-value and increased rework
  • Accumulation of inconsistency and process debt
  • Reduced trust in engineering data, systems, or ownership
  • Loss of agility in the face of change or failure

CMMI Maturity Model

  • Level 1 – Initial: Feedback loops may exist but are not actively monitored. Failures in telemetry or feedback channels often go unnoticed until significant issues arise.

  • Level 2 – Managed: Some teams have basic alerting in place for feedback mechanisms, but coverage is inconsistent, and broken loops are often discovered manually or too late.

  • Level 3 – Defined: Teams implement standardised alerting for key feedback loops (e.g., monitoring, user metrics, logs). Breaks in feedback trigger notifications, enabling faster issue detection.

  • Level 4 – Quantitatively Managed: Alerts are enriched with context and performance baselines. Feedback loop health is measured over time and reviewed as part of delivery governance.

  • Level 5 – Optimising: Feedback loop integrity is proactively tested and hardened. Insights from alert data are used to refine system design, reduce blind spots, and accelerate adaptation to change.


Key Measures

  • Adoption rates and coverage across teams
  • Impact on delivery metrics, quality, or team health
  • Evidence of ownership, governance, or learning loops
Associated Policies
  • Fast Feedback Loops
Associated Practices
  • Custom Metrics Instrumentation
  • End-user Experience Monitoring
  • Live Dashboards
  • Synthetic Monitoring
  • Application Performance Monitoring (APM)
  • Distributed Tracing
  • Real-Time Logging

Technical debt is like junk food - easy now, painful later.

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