T85 Dec 27, 2025 3 min read

Operability

How easy it is to run a system in production: deploy, debug, observe, and recover from failures.

Definition

Operability is how easy it is to run a system once it is deployed.

What good operability looks like

  • You can answer “what changed” quickly, using observability.
  • You can roll back safely when something goes wrong.
  • Failures have a clear first step, usually captured as a runbook.

Why it matters

Designs fail in production when they are hard to operate, even if the architecture is “correct.”