Chaos Engineering

Part V. Evolution

By definition, a human cannot understand a complex system well enough to make accurate predictions about its output. Chaos Engineering certainly lives within a complex system of interacting practices, needs, and business environments. That said, clear trends have emerged that outline the future directions of this practice and its place within broader industry. This part of the book speaks to those trends.

The first chapter in this part of the book, Chapter 16, “Continuous Verification,” situates Chaos Engineering within a larger category of software practices. “Like CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous delivery), the practice is born out of a need to navigate increasingly complex systems. Organizations do not have the time or other resources to validate that the internal machinations of the system work as intended, so instead they verify that the output of the system is inline with expectations.” Many companies have already embraced the term “continuous verification” (CV) and interest is growing in the full complement of practices “CI/CD/CV,” particularly at companies that operate software systems at scale.

The following chapter, Chapter 17, “Let’s Get Cyber-Physical,” takes a half-step away from software into the realm of hardware with cyber-physical systems (CPSs). “It turns out that when you get a lot of highly experienced, cross-disciplinary people together over a long enough period of time to undertake an activity like [Failure Mode and Effects Analysis], ...