Write SLAs for reality, not theory
Functional SLAs alone are fragile. Pair them with observability, rollback, and downgrade clauses so resilience is contractually enforceable. Define what happens when upstream APIs degrade, when latency spikes, and when data quality dips. Make health signals and rollback hooks part of the spec—not an afterthought.
Pre-negotiate failover behaviors
Map vendor exposure per interface and decide how you will operate under partial failure. Can you cache, queue, or switch to a local model? Write these behaviors into integration agreements so legal and engineering are aligned when incidents hit. Degraded service beats hard downtime.
Test the contracts under stress
Run outage drills, latency injections, and even disinformation scenarios inspired by modern AI risks. Verify that observability, throttling, and rollback clauses work as written. Contracts that survive testing will survive production—and give leadership confidence that continuity is engineered, not assumed.
sys3(a)i POV: We approach critical systems work by stress-testing architectures, integrating observability and governance from day one, and designing sovereign or edge footprints where independence and continuity matter most.