Trace budgets as a team sport

Observability planning fails when only SREs attend. We invite PMs and designers to trace budget workshops so user journeys—not services—anchor the conversation. Each journey gets a maximum span count; anything beyond that needs a written exception tied to an incident lesson. Cardinality exercises are blunt: we project bad label examples until the room winces. That shared wince becomes policy. Teams leave with a spreadsheet, not a manifesto, which makes socialization easier in policy-conscious enterprises. We also document what we will not do: no auto-instrument everything mandates, no promises of perfect coverage. The Observability Blueprint Sprint course expands these rituals with mentor review of two attendee services.