Severity 1 (High)
Major incident. Significant functionality is broken or degraded, but a workaround may exist or the impact is partial.
Major incident. Significant functionality is broken or degraded, but a workaround may exist or the impact is partial.
"It Hurts, But We Are Alive"
SEV1 (Severity 1) is a major issue. A core feature might be broken (e.g., "Users cannot update their profile pictures"), or performance is severely degraded (e.g., "Page loads take 10 seconds").
SEV1 vs. SEV0
- SEV0: The house is burning down. (System is down).
- SEV1: The kitchen is on fire, but the bedroom is fine. (Major feature broken).
Response Expectations
SEV1s require an Incident Commander and usually a Scribe. You should wake people up if it happens at night (depending on your On-Call policy), but you might not wake up the CEO.
ExThe Broken Image Upload
"A social network pushed a bug that prevented all image uploads. Users could still login and chat."
Why SEV1 Matters
Urgent, but the company is not "dead".
Business impact is high, but not existential.
Requires immediate attention but follows standard incident roles.