
Trying to see if a backend system runs properly, here are some questions and metrics that I have found interesting to look at. This is a first stab, rather than an exhaustive list.

- reliability:
  - how stable is the system?
  - how probable it is for an incident to happen?
  - how fast can we recover from an incident?
- usability
  - are users satisfied with the system?
  - is the system responsive?
  - how does the system perform in the weak/problematic areas?
- cost
  - how much are the infrastructure/maintenance/license cost?
  - what is the total cost of ownership of the system?
- speed of change
  - how long does it take for a feature to be delivered?

_Thanks to Peter for the discussion._

Update - further reading:

- book [[b-personal-mba|Personal MBA]], chapter Economic Values lists 9 common economic values
- article [Services; not Server](https://blog.last9.io/services-not-server-observability/)
- [Metrics For Your Web Application's Dashboards](https://sirupsen.com/metrics)


Marcel's notes

Business metrics for system maintenance