When would you choose SLO tooling over canary releases?

When it comes to implementing software delivery practices, both SLO (Service Level Objective) tooling and canary releases have their unique advantages. Choosing SLO tooling over canary releases largely depends on the organization's objectives, the criticality of the services, and the desired level of risk management. Below are some scenarios where SLO tooling could be more beneficial than canary releases:

• Compliance and Regulations: If your service needs to comply with strict performance standards, SLO tooling provides a framework to measure and report on these metrics effectively.
• Long-term Monitoring: SLO tooling helps in establishing a long-term performance monitoring strategy, which is crucial for operational excellence over prolonged periods.
• Better Visibility into Reliability: When an organization emphasizes reliability, SLO tooling offers insights into service health, potential risks, and areas for improvement.
• Focus on User Experience: SLOs prioritize user satisfaction metrics, ensuring that teams are more aligned with user expectations rather than just deployment frequency.
• Multi-Product Environments: In scenarios where multiple services are dependent on each other, SLO tooling can help manage the overall reliability rather than focusing on individual deployments.

In contrast, canary releases are more suitable for mitigating risk during deployments but may not provide the same level of ongoing performance monitoring and user experience focus.