Service Onboarding Checklist Template

[Team Name] — [Service Name] Onboarding Tracker

• Team: [FILL]
• Service(s): [FILL: comma-separated if multiple]
• Service Tier: Tier 1 | Tier 2 | Tier 3
• Platform Shepherd: [FILL: platform team contact]
• Started: YYYY-MM-DD
• Target Completion: YYYY-MM-DD
• Status: in-progress | complete | blocked

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Pre-Onboarding

Complete before any instrumentation work begins.

• Service tier confirmed with SRE team (see: Tier Definitions)
• Service owner named and registered
• On-call rotation registered in [PagerDuty / Grafana IRM]
• Service dependency map reviewed and documented: [FILL: link]
• Environment targets confirmed: dev / staging / prod

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Instrumentation

All instrumentation must use OTel-native SDKs. Proprietary vendor SDKs are not permitted for new services.

Metrics

• RED signals instrumented (Rate, Errors, Duration)
• Mandatory labels present (see: Label Schema)
  • service_name
  • environment
  • version
  • [FILL: org-specific required labels]
• Cardinality estimate reviewed and approved by platform team
  • Estimate: [FILL: N active series]
  • Approved by: [FILL: name]

Logs

• Structured JSON logging enabled (no unstructured log lines)
• Required fields present: timestamp, level, service, trace_id, span_id
• No PII in log lines (confirmed by: [FILL: name])
• Log level policy confirmed: DEBUG off in prod, INFO default

Traces

• Distributed tracing enabled via OTel SDK
• Sampling strategy confirmed:
  • Dev: [FILL: e.g. 100%]
  • Prod: [FILL: e.g. 10% tail sampling / 1% head sampling]
• Trace context propagated to all downstream calls (W3C TraceContext)
• trace_id present in logs for correlation

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Platform Configuration

• Collector pipeline configured for this service (Alloy / OTel Collector)
  • Config PR: [FILL: link]
• Data routed to correct backend:
  • Metrics → [FILL: Mimir stack / org]
  • Logs → [FILL: Loki stack / org]
  • Traces → [FILL: Tempo stack / org]
• Retention policy confirmed (see: Retention Policy)
• Service dashboard created and linked:
  • Dev: [FILL: Grafana URL]
  • Prod: [FILL: Grafana URL]
• Dashboard uses org-standard template (not a blank canvas)

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Alerting

• Availability alert configured
• Latency alert configured (P99 threshold: [FILL: N]ms)
• [FILL: any service-specific alert] configured
• All alerts have runbooks linked (see: Alert Runbook Template)
• Alerts tested and validated in dev/staging

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SLO Setup

• SLI definitions agreed with service team
• SLO targets set — see: [[Service Name] SLO Document](FILL: link)
• Error budget policy acknowledged by team lead (name: [FILL])
• Burn-rate alerts wired and tested

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Production Readiness Review (PRR)

Required for all Tier 1 and Tier 2 services before production launch.

• PRR completed: [FILL: Confluence PRR link]
• PRR decision: approved | approved-with-conditions | n/a (Tier 3)
• Any PRR conditions resolved: [FILL: Jira links, or “N/A”]

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Validation

This section is completed by the platform shepherd, not the service team.

• Signal quality confirmed in dev (query: [FILL])
• Cardinality budget within approved limits (verified: YYYY-MM-DD)
• On-call engineer dry-run of runbooks completed
  • Runthrough by: [FILL: name]
  • Date: YYYY-MM-DD
• Dashboard reviewed and signed off
• SLO burn-rate alert test fired in staging
• Onboarding sign-off by Observability Architect: [FILL: name] on YYYY-MM-DD

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Notes & Exceptions

Document any deviations from standard process, exceptions granted, or follow-up items.

Item	Exception / Note	Owner	Resolve by
[FILL]	[FILL]	[FILL]	YYYY-MM-DD

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Related Documents

• Service SLO Document: [FILL: link]
• Runbook Index: [FILL: link]
• Signal Catalog: [FILL: link]
• Label Schema: [FILL: link]
• PRR: [FILL: link, or N/A]
• Condensed Confluence version of this checklist (Template 5): Confluence Content Templates

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