Software Engineering basics - Chaos Engineering Principles

Chaos Engineering is a discipline focused on improving system resilience by intentionally introducing failures under controlled conditions. The goal is to uncover weaknesses before they manifest as real outages in production.

The core principle is to experiment on a system to build confidence in its ability to withstand turbulent conditions. Experiments begin with a steady-state hypothesis that defines normal behavior, such as acceptable response times or error rates.

Failures are then injected, such as shutting down servers, introducing latency, or breaking network connections. Observations are made to determine whether the system behaves as expected. Automation ensures experiments are repeatable and safe.

Chaos Engineering emphasizes learning over blame. Failures are treated as opportunities to improve architecture, monitoring, and operational processes. It also promotes shared responsibility between development and operations teams.

By practicing Chaos Engineering regularly, organizations can build highly resilient distributed systems capable of handling real-world unpredictability.