PROCESSES
Incident Management
The complete lifecycle of how organizations prevent, detect, respond to, and learn from incidents.
Incident Management
The complete lifecycle of how organizations prevent, detect, respond to, and learn from incidents.
The Big Picture
Incident Management is the umbrella term for the entire program. It includes:
- Preparation: Runbooks, Game Days, Monitoring.
- Response: The actual firefighting (Incident Response).
- Review: Post-incident reviews (Postmortems).
- Analysis: Weekly operational reviews, MTTR tracking.
Incident Management vs. Incident Response
- Response: "The house is on fire! Put it out!" (Tactical).
- Management: "Why did the house catch fire? How do we build fire-proof houses? Are we buying the right fire trucks?" (Strategic).
Maturity Levels
- Level 1 (Reactive): We fix it when customers complain.
- Level 2 (Responsive): We have alerts and fix it fast.
- Level 3 (Proactive): We have automated runbooks and defined SEV levels.
- Level 4 (Elite): We learn from every failure and our reliability increases over time.
ExThe "Unlucky" Team
"A team felt they were "unlucky" because they had 5 incidents a week."
Impact
Developers were quitting due to burnout.
Resolution
Management implemented an Incident Management process (weekly review of all incidents). They identified that 80% of alerts were noise (ignorable). They fixed the alerts, and "incidents" dropped to 1/week.
Why Incident Management Matters
Incident management is broader than response. It includes prevention, measurement, and continuous improvement.
Good incident management turns failures into learning opportunities.
Common Pitfalls
Only Focusing on Speed
Fixing fast is good. Fixing permanently (so it doesn't happen again) is better.
Blame Culture
If people are punished for incidents, they will hide them. You cannot manage what you hide.
How to Use Incident Management
📊
Track Everything: MTTR, frequency, severity by team.
🔄
Continuous Improvement: Every incident should make systems better.
📖
Document Processes: Clear roles and procedures for everyone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does small startups need this?
Yes. You don't need a 50-page manual, but you need a simple plan: Who gets called? How do they communicate?