Debug production without losing the thread
Signals are everywhere; durable reasoning is not. When decisions stay in chat, the next outage starts from zero.
ObserveCaptureCorrelateHypothesizeVerify
Concept
What’s actually happening
- Logs and metrics show symptoms — they don’t explain what you tried or rejected.
- The real work is choosing what to test next. That work is fragile unless you capture it.
- “Fixed” closes the ticket — it doesn’t preserve the path you took to get there.
Pattern
How a strong investigation unfolds
Move in a tight loop — keep observations, guesses, and proof tied together:
- Observe — what changed, what broke, what’s correlated?
- Capture — write down signals before they evaporate.
- Correlate — link evidence to hypotheses.
- Hypothesize — name what you’re testing and why.
- Verify — confirm or rule out with data, then move on.
Application
How CADS supports this
CADS maps each investigation to structured decisions and a living trail:
- Decisions — one place to state what you believe and what you’re doing about it
- Timeline — see what changed, when — across the investigation
- Entries — add context as it appears — not after the fact in a postmortem
Ready to apply this?
Start a decision in CADS →