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SLO Lifecycle

Eight states, and the one step without which the loop never closes.

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Declared in the repository Admitted resolution checked Measured buckets + coverage Derived budget + burn rate Published signed verdict Acted on gate, page, report Reviewed attainment + precision Amended new version One SLO one version at a time reject the unmeasurable event-time, 10 min counters summed sign and type someone decides was the page real? effective-from pull request SLO Lifecycle — The Loop That Has to Close Application we own Decision point Data store Interface / broker External / third party Security / platform The loop only closes at "reviewed": without measuring whether the pages were real and whether attainment is drifting, an SLO becomes a number that is maintained rather than used. The amendment step is a pull request, which is why a correction produces a corrected history rather than a silent rewrite. v 1.0 · owner Reliability Architecture · date 2026-10

Decisions

  • The loop only closes at "reviewed". Without measuring whether the pages were real and whether attainment is drifting, an SLO becomes a number that is maintained rather than used — the most common end state for this kind of platform.
  • Amendment is a pull request, which is what makes a correction produce a corrected history rather than a silent rewrite (ADR-05).
  • Admission is a state, not a validation step inside authoring: an unmeasurable objective never becomes an SLO at all (ADR-15).

Assumptions

  • Monthly review cadence per service, quarterly across the estate — assumed.
  • An SLO with no read activity for a declared period is flagged for retirement rather than deleted; the decision stays with the owning team.

Risks

  • Nothing in the loop forces a team to make a target harder when it is comfortably met. Drift toward easy SLOs is a cultural failure this architecture can surface but not prevent.
  • The review step has no enforcement. If it is skipped, the platform keeps producing defensible figures about targets nobody believes any more.
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Solution Architecture v1.0 · Microsoft Azure · Reliability Architecture · 2026-10 · 21 views · 17 architecture decision records18-slo-lifecycle