Incident Commander (IC)
The person responsible for all high-level coordination and decision-making during an incident.
The person responsible for all high-level coordination and decision-making during an incident.
The Captain of the Ship
The Incident Commander (IC) is the absolute authority during a major outage. Their job is not to fix the bug, but to manage the response. Think of them as an air traffic controller: they don't fly the planes, but they ensure none of them crash.
Core Responsibilities
- Establish Command: Announce "I am the IC" immediately upon joining.
- Assign Roles: Designate a Scribe and Communication Lead if the incident is complex.
- Decision Making: Make the hard calls on rollback vs. fix-forward.
- Status Updates: Ensure the organization stays informed.
The Golden Rule of Command
"The IC does not touch the keyboard."
If the IC starts debugging, they lose situational awareness. Their eyes must be on the entire field, not a single log file.
ExThe Silent Incident
"A database lock caused 50% errors. 20 engineers jumped on a Zoom call and started arguing about the root cause."
Why Incident Commander Matters
Without a clear leader, decisions stall and chaos increases.
Protects the rest of the team from distractions.
Single source of truth for incident state.