Confluence Space Structure — SRE / Observability / Platform Initiative

Confluence Space Structure — SRE / Observability / Platform Initiative

Lens: Solution Architect
Scale: MAANG-grade organization (multi-team, multi-cluster, multi-region)
Principle: Confluence is a living operational contract, not a document dump.
Fill sections marked [FILL] as the initiative matures. Never leave a page without an owner.

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1. Space Taxonomy

Use three dedicated Confluence spaces, not one. Sharing a space across SRE, Observability, and Platform conflates audiences and makes access control unmanageable.

Space Key	Space Name	Primary Audience	Owner Role
OBS	Observability Platform	Platform consumers, App teams	Observability Architect
SRE	SRE Practice	On-call engineers, Incident managers	Staff SRE / TL
PLT	Platform Engineering	Internal platform team	Platform TL

Why three:

• OBS is outward-facing — it’s what 200 teams read to onboard.
• SRE is operational — it governs live incidents, SLOs, error budgets.
• PLT is inward-facing — it governs how the platform itself is built.

Cross-linking is expected and encouraged. Avoid duplicating content across spaces — canonical lives in one space, others link to it.

Unified Home
│
├── 00 — Start Here
│   ├── Vision & Mission
│   ├── Team Charter & Ownership Model
│   ├── Quickstart: Onboard in 30 Minutes
│   ├── Engagement Model
│   └── Glossary
│
├── 01 — Platform Architecture
│   ├── Platform Overview (C4 L1-L2)
│   ├── Data Plane Architecture
│   ├── Control Plane Architecture
│   ├── Signal Catalog
│   ├── Dependency Map
│   ├── RFCs
│   ├── Technical Design Documents
│   └── Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)
│
├── 02 — Service Onboarding
│   ├── Onboarding Checklist
│   ├── Metrics Instrumentation Guide
│   ├── Logs Instrumentation Guide
│   ├── Traces Instrumentation Guide
│   ├── Naming & Label Schema
│   ├── Service Catalog
│   └── Onboarded Teams Registry
│
├── 03 — Reliability Engineering
│   ├── SRE Charter
│   ├── SLO Registry
│   ├── Error Budget Policy
│   ├── Production Readiness Review (PRR)
│   └── Reliability Review Archive
│
├── 04 — Operations & Incident Response
│   ├── On-Call Handbook
│   ├── Rotation Schedule
│   ├── Incident Response Playbook
│   ├── Severity Definitions
│   ├── Communication Templates
│   ├── Runbook Index
│   ├── Alert Runbooks
│   ├── Post-Mortems
│   └── Incident Trends & Themes
│
├── 05 — Platform Configuration
│   ├── Collector Config Templates
│   ├── Alert Rules Catalog
│   ├── Dashboard Catalog
│   ├── Sampling Policy
│   ├── Retention Policy
│   └── Feature Flags & Config Management
│
├── 06 — Build & Release
│   ├── Development Environment Setup
│   ├── CI/CD Pipeline Guide
│   ├── Release Process
│   ├── Deployment Runbooks
│   ├── Rollback Procedures
│   └── Release Notes
│
├── 07 — Cost & Governance
│   ├── Ingest Budget by Team
│   ├── Cardinality Governance
│   ├── Toil Budget Policy
│   ├── Vendor Registry
│   ├── Integration Specifications
│   └── Monthly Cost Reports
│
├── 08 — Strategy & Planning
│   ├── Roadmap
│   ├── Quarterly OKRs
│   └── Portfolio Initiatives
│
└── 09 — Archive
    ├── Historical Releases
    ├── Deprecated Designs
    ├── Retired Services
    └── Breaking Changes Register

---

2. Space: Observability Platform (OBS)

OBS Home
├── 00 — Start Here
│   ├── What is this platform?             [FILL: 1-para vision + non-goals]
│   ├── Quickstart: Onboard in 30 minutes  [FILL: step-by-step, team-agnostic]
│   └── Glossary                           [FILL: canonical term definitions]
│
├── 01 — Architecture
│   ├── Platform Overview (C4 L1–L2)       [FILL: embed draw.io / mermaid diagram]
│   ├── Data Plane Architecture            [FILL: collector → pipeline → backend]
│   ├── Control Plane Architecture         [FILL: config management, tenancy model]
│   ├── Signal Catalog                     [FILL: metrics / logs / traces / profiles]
│   └── Decision Log (ADRs)
│       ├── ADR-001: [FILL]
│       └── ADR-NNN: [FILL]
│
├── 02 — Onboarding
│   ├── Onboarding Checklist (template)    [FILL: copy per team, track completion]
│   ├── Instrumentation Guide — Metrics    [FILL: SDK, endpoint, label schema]
│   ├── Instrumentation Guide — Logs       [FILL: structured log format, fields]
│   ├── Instrumentation Guide — Traces     [FILL: OTel SDK, sampling strategy]
│   ├── Naming & Label Schema              [FILL: mandatory labels, cardinality rules]
│   └── Onboarded Teams Registry           [FILL: table — team / service / date / owner]
│
├── 03 — Configuration Reference
│   ├── Collector Config Templates         [FILL: link to Git repo paths]
│   ├── Alerting Rules Catalog             [FILL: rule name / signal / threshold / owner]
│   ├── Dashboard Catalog                  [FILL: URL / team / last reviewed]
│   └── Sampling & Retention Policy        [FILL: per-signal, per-environment]
│
├── 04 — Cost & Capacity (FinOps)
│   ├── Ingest Budget by Team              [FILL: table, refresh monthly]
│   ├── Cardinality Governance Policy      [FILL: limits, escalation path]
│   └── Monthly Cost Report               [FILL: auto-link to dashboard]
│
└── 05 — Changelog
    ├── Platform Release Notes             [FILL: semver-style, one entry per release]
    └── Breaking Changes Register          [FILL: migration guides per breaking change]

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3. Space: SRE Practice (SRE)

SRE Home
├── 00 — SRE Charter
│   ├── Mission & Scope                    [FILL: what SRE owns vs app teams]
│   ├── Engagement Model                   [FILL: how teams request SRE support]
│   └── Toil Budget Policy                 [FILL: toil % cap, escalation]
│
├── 01 — Services & SLOs
│   ├── Service Catalog                    [FILL: name / owner / tier / on-call rotation]
│   ├── SLO Registry
│   │   ├── [Service A] SLO Document       [FILL: per service — see template]
│   │   └── [Service N] SLO Document
│   └── Error Budget Policy                [FILL: burn-rate thresholds, freeze criteria]
│
├── 02 — On-Call
│   ├── On-Call Handbook                   [FILL: escalation paths, war-room setup]
│   ├── Rotation Schedule                  [FILL: link to PagerDuty / Grafana IRM]
│   └── On-Call Handoff Template           [FILL: use per shift]
│
├── 03 — Incident Management
│   ├── Incident Response Playbook         [FILL: phases — detect / triage / resolve / postmortem]
│   ├── Severity Definitions               [FILL: SEV1–SEV4 criteria + response SLAs]
│   ├── Communication Templates            [FILL: status page, stakeholder update]
│   └── Post-Mortems
│       ├── [YYYY-MM-DD] Incident Title    [FILL: per incident]
│       └── Themes & Patterns              [FILL: quarterly aggregate]
│
├── 04 — Runbooks
│   ├── Alert Runbook Index                [FILL: alert name → runbook link]
│   ├── [Alert: HighErrorRate]             [FILL: per alert]
│   └── [Alert: SLOBurnRateCritical]       [FILL: per alert]
│
└── 05 — Reliability Reviews
    ├── Production Readiness Review (PRR) Template  [FILL: checklist]
    └── PRR Archive
        └── [Service A] PRR — [YYYY-MM-DD] [FILL: per service per review cycle]

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4. Space: Platform Engineering (PLT)

PLT Home
├── 00 — Team & Mission
│   ├── Team Charter                       [FILL: scope, non-scope, staffing]
│   ├── Roadmap (rolling 6 months)         [FILL: refresh monthly]
│   └── OKRs                               [FILL: per quarter]
│
├── 01 — Design Documents
│   ├── RFCs (proposals)
│   │   ├── RFC-001: [FILL]
│   │   └── RFC-NNN: [FILL]
│   ├── Technical Design Documents
│   │   ├── [Component A] TDD              [FILL]
│   │   └── [Component N] TDD
│   └── Architecture Decision Records
│       └── (mirror or link to OBS/ADRs where shared)
│
├── 02 — Build & Ship
│   ├── Development Environment Setup      [FILL: local cluster, secrets, toolchain]
│   ├── CI/CD Pipeline Guide               [FILL: stages, gates, promotion criteria]
│   ├── Release Process                    [FILL: versioning, changelog, rollout steps]
│   └── Feature Flags & Config Management  [FILL: flag lifecycle, deprecation SLA]
│
├── 03 — Operations
│   ├── Deployment Runbooks                [FILL: per component]
│   ├── Rollback Procedures                [FILL: per component]
│   └── Dependency Map                     [FILL: upstream/downstream, SLA commitments]
│
└── 04 — Vendor & Integration
    ├── Vendor Registry                    [FILL: name / contract expiry / DRI / docs URL]
    └── Integration Specs                  [FILL: API contracts with external systems]

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5. Cross-Space Conventions

Naming

• Page titles: [Component / Area] — [Specific Topic] (avoids duplicate titles across spaces)
• Date-stamped entries: YYYY-MM-DD prefix always — Confluence search is date-blind without it
• Template pages: prefix with [TEMPLATE] so they’re greppable and excluded from navigation

Labels (apply consistently)

Label	Meaning
draft	Not yet ready for consumers
active	Current, maintained
deprecated	Superseded but kept for history
template	Not content — structural scaffold
adr / rfc / runbook / slo	Doc type routing

Ownership model

Every page must have an owner set in the page properties macro:

Owner:      [name / team]
Last reviewed: [YYYY-MM-DD]
Review cadence: [90d / 180d / 365d / immutable]
Status:     [draft / active / deprecated]

Pages with no owner and no review date in >90 days are doc debt — flag in monthly space audit.

Access Control

Space	Default viewer	Editor	Admin
OBS	All engineers	Platform + SRE team	Observability Architect
SRE	All engineers	SRE team	Staff SRE
PLT	Platform team + TLs	Platform team	Platform TL

Lock incident post-mortems after 30 days — they are immutable records.

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6. What NOT to put in Confluence

Don’t put here	Put here instead
Live config / YAML	Git repo (Confluence gets a link)
Credentials / tokens	Vault / Secrets Manager
One-time meeting notes	Jira / Slack threads
Draft code snippets	GitHub Gist / repo PR
Real-time dashboards	Grafana (Confluence gets an embed link)
Incident timeline (live)	Incident war-room doc, then promoted to post-mortem page

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Related

• Confluence Content Templates — page templates filed within this space structure
• Confluence Data Lifecycle & Governance — governance rules for pages living in these spaces

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Structure version: 1.0 — revisit at 6-month mark or after first major platform release.