A good SLI is the foundation of optimization and ownership. Over the past few years, I've gone through hundreds of system architecture diagrams to discover the service topology and identify the best metric to measure the health of the tech.

Looking back, I can group the quality of SLIs in 4 categories:

1. Traditional SLI: just take a metric and normalize it to a percentage

2. Consumer-aware: acknowledge that the service is consumed by someone

3. Task-aware: identify what those consumers are trying to achieve

4. Business-aware: pick SLIs that tie to business impact

This one has been a blast to write and illustrate. I tried to keep it as short and informative as possible.