Why has the average dashboard loading time in Sisense's cloud environment increased by 15 seconds compared to last week?

Introduction

The sudden increase in Sisense's cloud environment dashboard loading time by 15 seconds compared to last week is a critical issue that demands immediate attention. This performance degradation directly impacts user experience and could potentially lead to customer dissatisfaction and churn. To address this problem, I'll employ a systematic approach to identify, validate, and resolve the root cause while considering both short-term fixes and long-term strategic implications.

Step 1

Clarifying Questions (3 minutes)

• Looking at the timing, I'm thinking this could be related to recent changes. Have there been any significant updates or deployments to the cloud environment in the past week?

Why it matters: Recent changes often correlate with performance issues. Expected answer: Yes, there was a major update. Impact on approach: If yes, we'd focus on the update's components; if no, we'd look at gradual degradation factors.

• Considering the specificity of the 15-second increase, I'm curious about our monitoring granularity. Are we seeing a consistent 15-second increase across all dashboards, or is this an average with significant variations?

Why it matters: Consistency could indicate a systemic issue, while variations might point to specific dashboard problems. Expected answer: It's an average with some variation. Impact on approach: Consistent increase would lead us to look at global factors, while variations would require segmentation analysis.

• Given the cloud environment, I'm wondering about resource allocation. Has there been any change in our cloud resource utilization or scaling policies recently?

Why it matters: Cloud resource constraints often lead to performance issues. Expected answer: No changes in policies, but usage has increased. Impact on approach: If policies changed, we'd review those; if usage increased, we'd focus on scaling and optimization.

• Thinking about user behavior, have we seen any significant changes in dashboard complexity or data volume being processed in the past week?

Why it matters: Increased data volume or complexity could explain longer loading times. Expected answer: Some users have created more complex dashboards recently. Impact on approach: If yes, we'd look at optimization for complex queries; if no, we'd focus more on infrastructure or code-level issues.