The signals worth watching
Six families of run health signal, what each one can and cannot tell you, how long a sampling window has to be before it means anything, and where composite dashboard numbers mislead.
01OpenSignals, Windows and the Rules They Trigger
A signal is a reading you have decided in advance to act on. Everything else on a screen is information, and information is not free: each extra panel is another thing to misread at two in the morning. This section separates the two, then defines the rules that let a signal end a run without a negotiation.
Two ideas run through both pages. The first is the sampling window: no reading means anything until it has run long enough to be distinguishable from an ordinary quiet minute. The second is that a threshold is a choice with cost in both directions, which is why this desk describes the costs and refuses to publish the number.
signal A reading you agreed to act on before the run opened, with the action already named
window The span a reading must persist across before it is allowed to mean anything
threshold The line you set yourself, knowing what too tight costs and what too loose costs
owner The person permitted to execute the action, and the only person permitted to override it
2 pieces in this section
What a live reading is made of and what it is allowed to trigger. Signal families, sampling windows, the thresholds you set before the run starts, and the conditions that end it without a debate.
Stop conditions written in advance
A stop condition has a signal, a window, a threshold, an action and an owner. How to write all five before the run opens, and what setting the threshold too tight or too loose actually costs.
02OpenHow this section is used
The signals page defines what you are looking at and how long you have to look before it counts. The stop conditions page turns a subset of those readings into rules that fire without asking permission. Written in that order, the second page is short, because most of the argument has already happened.
Live run The hour the run is actually open. Watch cadence, what a check is supposed to answer, which adjustments are worth making mid-flight, and how a run is closed out once the last transaction has settled. Questions Twelve short answers to the questions that arrive while a run is open, from handover etiquette to telling a finished run from a stalled one.