---
name: service-objectives-per-operation
description: "Named indicator, numeric target, window, and miss action per user-facing operation. Use when agreeing how good an operation must be."
---

# Service Objectives Per Operation

**Produce one objective per user-facing operation.** An operation is something
a user starts and waits for, such as submitting a booking or opening a page.
Each objective states five things and nothing else:

- the indicator, named as the user experiences it;
- the numeric target;
- the measurement window;
- the data source the number is read from;
- the action that follows a miss.

**Name the indicator as an outcome, not as a status code.** Write "booking
submitted and confirmation shown", not "HTTP 200 rate". The name decides what
gets measured, so a name that hides the user's failure hides the miss too.

**Apply the default when the owner stated no target.** The default is 99.0%
successful responses and p95 response under 1 second, over a rolling 28 days
`[ASSUMPTION A-8]`. State the default back to the owner in one sentence with
its consequence, so the number stays their decision.

**Read the number from a source that already exists.** Name the log field, the
metric, or the query. If no source exists, the objective is not finished:
create the source in the same change, or write down that the objective is
unmeasured.

**Count every request the operation serves.** If you exclude traffic — health
checks, retries, one client — write the exclusion into the objective. A silent
exclusion turns a miss into a pass.

**Write the miss action as a first move by a named role.** State who acts,
what they do first, and what they do if the first move fails. "Investigate" is
not an action. "The operator switches booking to phone-only and calls the
developer" is.

**A reviewer checks:**

- every user-facing operation has an objective, and every objective has all
  five fields;
- the target is a number with a window, not a word;
- the data source can be queried today, and the query returns the indicator;
- the miss action names who acts and what they do first;
- stated exclusions are listed in the objective, not applied in the query
  only.