Okay, what are your tips for getting to grips with a complex software deployment with many moving pieces (in this case Thanos/Prometheus on Kubernetes across multiple clusters) and few remaining domain experts, who are therefore rather busy.

Like in an ideal world I would want to sit on someone's shoulder to see how they work and begin to get a picture of all the pieces, then read up on the details in my own time to fill out my understanding, but that doesn't seem readily available in the circumstances.

How do you make the most of people's time? How do you avoid wasting your own time? I love reading docs but I find it's an inefficient substitute for a hands-on introduction; better at helping you build from scratch than understanding some particular deployment's idiosyncrasies.

BTW assume no particular restrictions here, other than "keep the service running" and "optimise for the success (and health) of the whole team". Busy people are not *inaccessible*, you just need to be respectful of their time.