Getting Started with Chaos Engineering - design of an implementation framework in practice

Abstract

Background. Chaos Engineering is proposed as a practice to verify a system's resilience under real, operational conditions. It employs fault injection, is originally developed at Netflix, and supported by several tools from there and other sources. Aims. We aim to introduce Chaos Engineering at ICA Gruppen AB, a group of companies whose core business is grocery retail, to improve their systems' resilience, and to capture our knowledge gained from literature and interviews in a process framework for the introduction of Chaos Engineering. Method. The research is conducted under the design science paradigm, where the problem is conceptualized through a literature study of Chaos Engineering and exploratory interviews in the company. The solution framework is designed based on the literature and a tool survey, and validated by letting software engineers at ICA apply parts of it to the software systems of ica.se website, including its e-shop. Results. The main contributions are a synthesis of Chaos Engineering literature and tools, in depth understanding of the needs of the case company, and guidelines for introducing Chaos Engineering. Conclusions. The applied parts were concluded to be feasible and they successfully discovered a set of initial improvement opportunities for the system's resilience, as well as a suitable Chaos Engineering practice for future resilience testing of the system. We recommend companies using the framework as a guide for the implementation of Chaos Engineering.