Find Bottlenecks Fast

Overview

Make your systems feel fast and stay fast. This playbook focuses on the small set of metrics and practices that move the needle.

North‑Star Metrics

• Time to first byte (TTFB) - p95 latency per critical endpoint - Error rate and saturation (CPU/memory/IO)

Diagnose First, Then Tune

1. Establish a baseline: capture 7 days of logs, traces, and metrics. 2) Map the slow path: which calls dominate latency? follow the trace. 3) Find the constraint: database, network, compute, or code hot spots.

High‑Leverage Fixes

• Cache the expensive 20% (with SLAs and invalidation rules) - Add indexes for slow queries; avoid N+1s - Use back‑pressure, timeouts, and retries explicitly - Profile before optimizing code paths

Quick Checklist

• p95 < 300ms on critical APIs - [ ] No 5xx spikes under load - [ ] Dashboards for latency, errors, saturation - [ ] Load test per release for key journeys

Conclusion

Performance is a habit. Measure, improve, repeat. If you want help prioritizing fixes that deliver real user impact, talk to Keynodex: https://keynodex.com/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=core-system-performance-analysis-guide