Chaos Engineering

Part IV. Business Factors

Chaos Engineering exists to solve a real business need. It was born at Netflix and now has adoption across thousands of companies, a large portion of which are not primarily software companies. This part of the book provides more context about how Chaos Engineering fits into the larger context of business concerns.

Chapter 13, “ROI of Chaos Engineering,” addresses the most important question about the practice from a business perspective, namely: How do we prove that adopting Chaos Engineering provides more value than it costs? “Demonstrating the ROI of Chaos Engineering is not easy. In most cases, you will feel the value of experiments almost immediately, before you can articulate that value.” This chapter provides a model for considering ROI and applies it to the practice.

Russ Miles takes the business considerations in a different direction in Chapter 14, “Open Minds, Open Science, and Open Chaos,” by emphasizing the relationship between business domains and scientific pursuits. “Like all science, Chaos Engineering is at its most valuable when it is highly collaborative: where everyone can see what experiments are being pursued, when they are happening, and what findings have surfaced.” He makes a case for open source tools, experiments, and community to get the most value out of this discipline.

One of the most common questions for organizations adopting Chaos Engineering is where to start, or how to proceed. Chapter 15, “Chaos Maturity Model,” provides ...