SLO-Based CICD Pipeline Using Burn Rates for Reliable Testing

Resolve Bottlenecks,
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions

Solution Overview

Problem

Existing CICD methodologies rely on Service Level Indicators (SLIs) for alerting, which are noisy, require significant developer effort, and are prone to false positives and unconsidered causes, leading to inefficient and costly deployments and testing.

Innovation Solution

A Service Level Objective (SLO)-based Continuous Integration/Continuous Development (CICD) framework that uses SLOs for Canary deployments, chaos engineering, and performance testing, reducing reliance on SLIs and implementing multi-window burn rates to manage error budgets and chaos fault injection dynamically.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If Service Level Indicators (SLIs) are used for alerting in CICD methodologies, then monitoring coverage is improved, but false positives increase and developer effort increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvemonitoring coverageVSAvoidfalse positives

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSObject-generated harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

The patent introduces Service Level Objectives (SLOs) as an intermediary layer between SLIs and alerting mechanisms. Instead of directly using SLIs for alerting, the system evaluates whether SLI measurements violate SLO thresholds. This intermediary SLO layer filters out noise and transient violations, reducing false positives while maintaining monitoring coverage.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent changes the parameter basis for alerting from raw SLI measurements to SLO-based evaluations. By transforming the alerting criterion from direct SLI threshold violations to SLO compliance assessments, the system achieves more reliable alerting with fewer false positives.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

2Reliability

If Service Level Indicators (SLIs) are used for alerting in CICD methodologies, then monitoring coverage is improved, but developer effort increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvemonitoring coverageVSAvoiddeveloper effort

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSEase of operation

Solution Approach 1:

The system implements automated SLO evaluation and alerting based on SLI measurements without requiring manual developer intervention. The framework automatically compares SLI data against SLO thresholds, determines violations, and triggers alerts, thereby reducing developer effort while maintaining comprehensive monitoring coverage.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #25Self-service

3Manufacturing precision

If traditional CICD testing methodologies are used, then code integration is achieved, but deployment speed decreases and costs increase

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecode integration qualityVSAvoiddeployment speed

Core Design Contradiction:

Manufacturing precisionVSProductivity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent implements performance testing as a preliminary action before production deployment. By using SLO-based performance testing in the CICD pipeline, the system validates that code changes meet performance requirements upfront, preventing costly post-deployment fixes and enabling faster, more confident deployments.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

4Reliability

If comprehensive performance testing is performed, then reliability is improved, but testing time and resources increase

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvesystem reliabilityVSAvoidtesting time

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The patent changes the testing parameters from exhaustive traditional performance testing to targeted SLO-based performance testing. By focusing tests on specific SLO thresholds and performance metrics relevant to the code changes, the system achieves comprehensive reliability validation with reduced testing time and resources.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

Data Source

PatentUS12536092B1Service level objective (SLO) based continuous integration / continuous development (CICD) framework for performance testing

Publication Date: 2026.01.27 UNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION (USAA)

AI summary

A Service Level Objective (SLO)-based Continuous Integration/Continuous Development (CICD) framework is disclosed, which enables SLO-based Canary deployments, SLO-based chaos engineering, and/or SLO-based performance testing. The SLO-based CICD framework enhances and simplifies CICD pipelines and brings the pipelines in line with Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) best practices. By relying on SLOs rather than SLIs, the SLO-based CICD framework avoids the use of threshold-based alerts, which can be noisy and error prone, and the thresholds associated with threshold-based alerts can change over time due to changes in production volume. The SLO-based CICD framework uses multi-window burn rates when evaluating SLOs, which removes the reliance on a static, predefined thresholds of SLI threshold-based alerting, and removes sensitivity of such evaluations to changes in production volume.