# A Software Engineer's Guide to Observability: Part 2 - APM & Distributed Tracing

DevFeed: [A Software Engineer's Guide to Observability: Part 2 - APM & Distributed Tracing](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/a-software-engineer-s-guide-to-observability-part-2-apm-distributed-tracing-23695.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://engineering.theblueground.com/a-software-engineers-guide-to-observability-part-2-apm-distributed-tracing-2/>)

Author: Andreas Gounaris

Published: 2026-06-02T12:27:24Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Blueground Engineering blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/blueground-engineering-blog.md>)

Topics: [Application Performance Management (APM)](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/apm.md>), [tracing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/tracing.md>), [observability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/observability.md>), [telemetry](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/telemetry.md>), [Instrumentation](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/instrumentation.md>), [debugging](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/debugging.md>)

Tags: [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [apm](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/apm.md>), [debugging](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/debugging.md>), [devops](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/devops.md>), [distributed](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [guide](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/guide.md>), [instrumentation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/instrumentation.md>), [monitoring](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/monitoring.md>), [observability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/observability.md>), [tracing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tracing.md>)

## AI overview

This guide explains how APM and distributed tracing complement logs by showing application latency, errors, throughput, and time spent across code paths and services. It covers instrumentation, span collection, and tracing workflows for investigating performance problems.

## Source excerpt

Blueground Engineering's observability guide to APM: why tracing matters, auto-instrumentation strategies, custom span best practices, and AI-enhanced debugging workflows In Part 1, we covered logging as your forensics tool for understanding what happened after you've identified a problem. Logs are great at telling you