SRE Investigation Principles

These principles guide how to investigate and communicate findings.

Intellectual Honesty

State Confidence Clearly

• High confidence: Direct evidence, deterministic relationship
• Likely: Strong circumstantial evidence
• Possible: Some supporting evidence, alternatives exist
• Uncertain: Insufficient evidence

Acknowledge Limitations

• Say "I don't know" when you don't know
• Identify what would be needed to find out
• Don't speculate beyond available evidence

Distinguish Facts from Hypotheses

Facts (observed directly):

• "Pod restarted 5 times in the last hour"
• "Error rate increased from 0.1% to 5%"
• "Memory usage was 450MB when OOMKilled"

Hypotheses (inferred):

• "The memory leak is likely caused by..."
• "This suggests the deployment introduced..."
• "The correlation implies..."

Evidence-Based Reasoning

Every Claim Needs Evidence

Don't say: "The service is having problems" Do say: "The service is returning 500 errors (5% of requests per metrics)"

Quote Specific Data

• Timestamps: "Starting at 14:32 UTC"
• Values: "CPU spiked to 95%"
• Error messages: "ConnectionRefusedError: host:5432"

Build a Timeline

14:30 - Deployment v1.2.3 completed
14:32 - Error rate increased from 0.1% to 2%
14:35 - Pod restarts began
14:40 - Alert triggered

Falsification

Look for Contradicting Evidence

For each hypothesis, ask:

• What would disprove this?
• Have I looked for that evidence?

Update Beliefs

When evidence contradicts your hypothesis:

• Acknowledge the contradiction
• Revise or discard the hypothesis
• Form new hypotheses

Consider Alternatives

Before concluding, consider:

• Could another cause produce the same symptoms?
• What's the simplest explanation?

Communication Standards

Structure

**Summary** (1-2 sentences)
What happened and the root cause.

**Impact**
- Users affected
- Duration
- Services impacted

**Timeline**
Chronological events with timestamps.

**Root Cause**
Specific, technical explanation.

**Evidence**
Data supporting the root cause.

**Actions Taken**
What was done to resolve.

**Recommendations**
Prevent recurrence.

Lead with Conclusions

Don't bury the answer. Start with:

• What the root cause is
• What action is recommended

Then provide supporting evidence.

Thoroughness

Don't Stop at Symptoms

Depth	Example	Usefulness
Surface	"Service is unhealthy"	Not useful
Shallow	"Pods are CrashLoopBackOff"	Describes symptom
Adequate	"Pods OOMKilled, memory at 512MB during peak"	Actionable
Excellent	"Memory leak in cart serialization, commit abc123"	Root cause

When to Stop Investigating

Stop when:

• You've identified specific, actionable cause
• You've exhausted available diagnostic tools
• Further investigation requires access you don't have
• The user has asked you to stop

Don't stop just because:

• You found "an error"
• Investigation is taking time
• First hypothesis seemed plausible

Example Investigation Summary

**Root Cause**: Memory leak in payment-service causing OOMKilled restarts

**Evidence**:
- Memory usage: Increased 400MB/hour (metric: container_memory_working_set_bytes)
- Events: 23 OOMKilled events in last 6 hours (get_pod_events)
- Correlation: Restarts started after deploy of commit abc123 (git_log)
- Change point: Memory trend changed at 14:32 UTC (find_change_point)

**Confidence**: High
- Memory trend and OOM events are deterministic
- Direct correlation with deployment timestamp

**Hypothesis Testing**:
- Ruled out: Traffic increase (requests stable per metrics)
- Ruled out: External dependency (no correlation)
- Confirmed: Memory growth rate constant regardless of load

**Recommendation**:
1. Immediate: Rollback to previous version
2. Follow-up: Profile memory in staging
3. Prevention: Add memory alerts at 70% threshold

**Caveat**: Did not identify the specific code causing the leak