Resilience Orbit™

The operating system for predictable resilience.

Jump‑start or level up your technology ecosystem’s resilience — by design, not by hope. Make it a deliberate, conscious practice that is iterative, quick, measurable, and sustainable. It is never an afterthought.

Every 21 days: simulate volatility, ship safeguards (kill‑switch, retries, failover), run a game day, and publish a scorecard. Simple loop, real outcomes.

21‑day closed loop Simulate → Ship → Chaos‑test → Score Exec‑ready metrics Scrum & DevOps ready
Download Complete Toolkit Quickstart (PDF)

Why Resilience Orbit?

Clarity
A simple loop that aligns product, platform, and operations.
Measured
Every cycle ends with a one‑page scorecard and two next actions.
Fast
Short cycles reduce time to value and improve recovery quickly.
Sustainable
Turns resilience into a steady habit, not a one‑off project.

Resilience Loop

Ship self‑healing Flags • rollback • circuit breaker Chaos test Prove recovery in prod‑like Executive scorecard Availability • MTTR • automation

Ship a self‑healing change → run a targeted chaos test → publish the executive scorecard. Repeat every 21 days.

How to Incorporate into Agile & DevOps

Backlog
  • Add label Resilience (or Orbit).
  • Create 1–3 small resilience stories per sprint for one critical service.
Planning
  • Reserve ~10% of capacity.
  • Pick one service + one failure mode to improve.
  • Add a resilience outcome to the sprint goal.
Execution
  • Standups: 30‑sec “any resilience risks/signals?”
  • DoR: service, failure mode, metric defined.
  • DoD: runbook updated, alert owner set, SLO tile visible, small chaos check.
DevOps: PR Template
- [ ] Runbook link added
- [ ] SLO impact reviewed (dashboard link)
- [ ] Alert maps to a human
- [ ] Rollback/flag path verified
DevOps: CI/CD
  • Add a tiny post‑deploy “resilience” job with a safe chaos smoke in staging/prod‑like.
  • Gate on dashboard health or a simple probe.
Feature Flags & Observability
  • Ship one safety flag per sprint (kill‑switch/degrade/traffic shift).
  • Define one SLO per service; add one alert + one runbook link.

Use it now: PR & DoD

PR checks (copy & paste)
- [ ] Runbook link added
- [ ] SLO impact reviewed (dashboard link)
- [ ] Alert maps to a human
- [ ] Rollback/flag path verified
Download PR template (MD)
Definition of Done — Resilience adds
- [ ] Runbook updated (5 lines: Symptom → First action → Owner → Escalation → Rollback/flag)
- [ ] Alert owner set
- [ ] SLO tile visible (dashboard link)
- [ ] Rollback/flag path verified
Download DoD (MD)

21‑Day Cadence at a Glance

Anticipate Fortify Validate Evolve Day 7 Day 14 Day 18 Toolkit (PDF) Quickstart (PDF) Executive Scorecard (Template)

Anticipate → Fortify → Validate → Evolve. Gates at Days 7, 14, and 18. Publish the executive scorecard on Day 21.

Downloads & Guides

Complete Toolkit

Cadence, checklists, scoring model, and playbooks.

Download Toolkit (PDF)
Quickstart Guide

21‑day starter: scope, self‑healing, chaos drill, scorecard.

Download Quickstart (PDF)
Day‑1 Sprint Guide

90‑minute recipe to ship one self‑healing safety today.

Download Day‑1 Guide (PDF)
Executive Scorecard

Use the template, see a sample, and read the short guide.

Template (CSV)Sample (CSV)Guide (TXT)

Sample Resilience Orbit by Industry

Retail / Services
  • Volatility: seasonal spikes; POS/service desk outages.
  • Metrics: checkout success; queue time; reconciliation accuracy.
  • Upgrades: offline‑capable flows; payment failover; live store health dashboards.
Payments / FinTech
  • Volatility: gateway latency; issuer declines.
  • Metrics: auth rate; chargeback ratio; settlement timing.
  • Upgrades: smart retries; provider failover; webhook hardening.
SaaS / Platforms
  • Volatility: noisy neighbor; multi‑tenant load.
  • Metrics: error budgets; rollback time; ticket volume.
  • Upgrades: progressive delivery; circuit breakers; golden signals dashboards.
Healthcare
  • Volatility: EMR integrations; identity assurance; privacy constraints.
  • Metrics: SLO uptime; message delivery success; MTTA/MTTR.
  • Upgrades: idempotent interfaces; queue backpressure; DR tests with audit trail.
Manufacturing / OT
  • Volatility: factory network reliability; edge device drift.
  • Metrics: data freshness; job success rate; mean time between failures.
  • Upgrades: edge buffering; drift detection; offline safe modes.
Public Sector
  • Volatility: traffic bursts around deadlines; policy changes.
  • Metrics: page success rate; queue time; case resolution time.
  • Upgrades: autoscaling; CDN optimization; accessibility monitoring.

About the Creator

Resilience Orbit™ was created by Sumaya Shakir to help teams run resilience like a product—small loops, measurable outcomes, and pragmatic engineering. For speaking, workshops, or implementation help, email [email protected].