A long time ago (in April 2019), in a galaxy far far away (in Tel Aviv, Planet Earth) we launched a self-serve option. Users could now sign up to Rookout without having to contact us first. We invested significant resources in online promotion and -- just like any startup at our stage -- we hoped to soon see legions of users signing up and using the tool to fetch data directly from their code.
You’ve been staring at your screen for hours, trying to check why a certain bug is occurring only for end-users in your production environment. You’ve tried a multitude of approaches: adding log lines in all kinds of indicative places, logging potentially relevant variables to get an indication of the state in which the bug occurs, and the list just goes on. Sounds familiar?
In a modern organization, the dependency on constant data flow doesn’t skip a single role -- already encompassing every function in R&D, Sales, Marketing, BI, and Product. Essentially every position is going through a fusion process with data-science. “Data is the new oil.” “Everyone needs data.” You’ve probably run into these and similar expressions more than once. The reason you hear them so often is that they are true.
If you’re building software, it is very likely that you are familiar with Conway’s Law. It is the single most important rule for software development. Employing this law will facilitate your success. Failing to abide by it, on the other hand, will guarantee your failure. I’ve witnessed this first hand in many places throughout my career, among them command and control services, Big Data processing systems, and even security components embedded into the very cars you are now driving.
As an entrepreneur and the CTO of a young startup, keeping a close eye on the product is at the top of my priorities. To keep improving the product, I’m always alert to new issues; and seeing those issues from different perspectives is key to resolving problems before users are affected. This is where monitoring comes in. In this blog post, I will get you into my stack and share the list of monitoring tools I’m using on a daily basis.
