Observability Engineering, 2nd Edition

Chapter 30. The Art and Science of Vendor Partnerships

The buying process for observability is broken. The world has changed so fast, and process and alignment and structure have not caught up.

And observability is so inextricably interwoven with your company’s pace, feedback loops, ability to see clearly and make good decisions, that if your observability evaluation and procurement process is broken, your company is broken, too. These decisions have ripple effects that linger on for years.

This chapter is not intended to be an intensive guide to the software buying process from start to finish (which would be impossible anyway), but it does offer an introduction to the art and science of vendor engineering. We cover topics like leveraging trust and credibility to extend your influence across organizational boundaries; driving sociotechnical transformations from within; and building enduring, positive-sum partnerships across industry and company lines.

It’s good for the company, it’s good for the industry, and it’s good for you. These are some executive-level skills—one of the rare ways to earn them as an individual contributor (IC)—and they are durable in a post-AI era.

Most software transformations fail. Each one is ridiculously unlikely to succeed. Those that do succeed rely not only on technical excellence and top-down mandates, but on trust and credibility.

In this chapter, we will give you some tools to get started. We’ll talk about who your stakeholders are internally, ...