The text discusses the importance of shifting observability left in modern software development, particularly in microservices architectures. It introduces distributed tracing as a solution to simplify visibility into deployments and aligns with an open-source ethos. Distributed tracing provides transparency and insights by tracking individual requests across multiple services and systems, enabling developers to visualize the entire path of a request and analyze performance and behavior. Shifting observability left with distributed tracing allows for preemptive action, informed architectural decisions, and strategic resource utilization, ultimately enhancing the user experience and fostering better collaboration among teams. The text also provides guidance on adopting distributed tracing in development workflows, including selecting the right solution, instrumenting codebase, defining key performance indicators, visualizing and analyzing traces, and sharing insights. By leveraging distributed tracing technology like OpenTelemetry, developers can create robust, high-performing applications from the start and embark on a journey of continuous iterative deployment improvement.