Resilience Orbit Framework

A pragmatic 21‑day loop for predictable resilience — created by Sumaya Shakir.

What it is

Resilience Orbit™ is a lightweight operating system for resilience. Every 21 days, teams simulate volatility, ship one safeguard, validate recovery with a safe chaos check, and publish a one‑page executive scorecard.

Small & fast
One service, one failure mode, one safeguard per loop.
Measurable
Availability, MTTR, automation shipped, test outcome.
Sustainable
Runs alongside feature delivery — not a side project.

The 21‑Day Loop

Anticipate → Fortify → Validate → Evolve
Simulate volatility Load, latency, dependency, failover Ship safeguard Kill‑switch • retries • circuit breaker Validate recovery Chaos smoke in prod‑like

Publish the executive scorecard on Day 21; pick two next actions for the next loop.

Minimal Roles & RACI

Product
Accountable
Sets outcome; accepts “done” with user impact in mind.
Platform/Infra
Responsible
Implements safeguards; validates rollback & flags.
SRE/Operations
Responsible
Chaos smoke; runbook; alert owner; MTTR analysis.
Security
Consulted
Threat paths; authN/Z implications; audit trail.
Executive — Informed via one‑page scorecard; approves next two actions.

Metrics that matter

Availability
SLO attainment / error budget
MTTR
Mean time to recovery for the scoped failure
Automation
New safeguards shipped this loop
Quality
Rollback success; alert → human mapping
Confidence
Chaos drill result; time to detect
Cost to serve
Tickets avoided; toil reduced

Executive scorecard (1‑page specimen)

Service: Checkout API      Owner: Platform      Period: Loop #5 (Days 1–21)

Outcome: Availability ↑ 0.6 pts; MTTR ↓ 38%; 1 safeguard shipped

Safeguard Shipped
- Retry + jitter for gateway timeouts; kill‑switch for degrade mode

Chaos Result
- Injected 300ms latency to gateway; alert fired in 45s; auto‑degrade held SLO; manual rollback verified in 2m

Signals
- SLO 99.9% (budget used: 18%)
- MTTR median 7m (prev 11m)
- Tickets avoided (est): 12

Next Two Actions (approved):
1) Add circuit breaker on webhook processing
2) Runbook hot‑path update + drill
Download Template (CSV) Scorecard Guide (TXT)

Implementation quickstart

  1. Pick scope: one journey + one SLO target.
  2. Micro‑runbook: Symptom → First action → Owner → Escalation → Rollback/flag.
  3. Ship one safety: kill‑switch, retry+jitter, circuit‑breaker, or probe.
  4. Game day: simulate failure; exit: alert fires, recovery < 5 minutes.
  5. Scorecard: publish metrics + two next actions.
Quickstart (PDF) Day‑1 Guide (PDF)

FAQ

Does this slow features?
No. Reserve ~10% capacity; target a single safeguard per loop.
Prod vs staging?
Chaos smoke in prod‑like is preferred; production drills only with narrow blast radius.
Tooling?
Use what you have: flags, dashboards, probes, CI/CD hooks. No vendor lock‑in.

Workshops & collaboration

For workshops, speaking, or implementation support, email info@resilienceorbit.com. Learn more about Sumaya Shakir.