Define Requirements, SLOs & Budgets

Turn vague product requirements into measurable reliability, latency, capacity and recovery expectations.

Lesson overview

Requirements become engineering inputs when they are measurable. Define SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, latency percentiles, traffic assumptions and recovery objectives before selecting infrastructure.

Learning path

Theory → Example → Code → Practice → Quiz → Challenge → Completion

0/6 done

Step 1

Theory

Requirements become engineering inputs when they are measurable. Define SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, latency percentiles, traffic assumptions and recovery objectives before selecting infrastructure.

Step 2

Example

For a SaaS dashboard, define p95 latency, monthly availability and acceptable recovery time. The targets determine how much complexity is justified.

Step 3

Code

typescript
const slo = { availability: 99.9, p95LatencyMs: 300, recoveryMinutes: 60 };
const monthlyMinutes = 30 * 24 * 60;
const errorBudgetMinutes = monthlyMinutes * (1 - slo.availability / 100);

Step 4

Practice

Review your current application and apply Define Requirements, SLOs & Budgets. Document the current behavior, one production risk, the change you would make, and how you would verify it.

Step 5

Quiz

1. What is the central production concern in "Define Requirements, SLOs & Budgets"?

Step 6

Challenge

Design a production-ready implementation for Define Requirements, SLOs & Budgets. Include failure handling, security considerations, observability, testing and a rollback or recovery path where applicable.

Complete every stage

Work through every step in order, then the lesson will be marked complete.

Previous lessonWhat Changes in Production?Next lessonDesign a Production Architecture

Each chapter and subtopic has its own public URL under /full-stack-to-production.