How to build effective incident response and crisis management procedures
Prepare your team to handle outages, security breaches, and crises calmly and effectively, minimizing damage and recovery time.
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0 of 8 steps completedStep-by-Step Instructions
1 Step 1: Define incident severity levels and classification
Step 1: Define incident severity levels and classification
Create clear severity tiers: P0 (critical customer-facing outage), P1 (major degradation), P2 (minor issues), P3 (cosmetic). Define response time and escalation for each. Classification determines urgency and resources allocated. Consistency prevents over- or under-reaction.
2 Step 2: Establish on-call rotation and escalation paths
Step 2: Establish on-call rotation and escalation paths
Designate who responds first, backup responders, and escalation to leadership for critical incidents. Use paging tools to ensure alerts reach the right people. Rotate on-call fairly to prevent burnout. Clear escalation prevents delays during incidents.
3 Step 3: Create incident response runbooks for common scenarios
Step 3: Create incident response runbooks for common scenarios
Document step-by-step procedures: "Database slow? Check these queries. API errors? Restart these services. Security alert? Follow this containment process." Runbooks enable faster response, especially for less experienced responders. Update runbooks after each incident with lessons learned.
4 Step 4: Set up incident communication channels and status pages
Step 4: Set up incident communication channels and status pages
Create dedicated Slack channel or war room for incident coordination. Use status pages (StatusPage.io, etc.) to communicate with customers proactively. Internal and external communication prevents confusion and manages expectations. Silence during incidents erodes trust.
5 Step 5: Implement blameless post-mortems after every major incident
Step 5: Implement blameless post-mortems after every major incident
Within 48 hours, document: timeline, root cause, impact, what worked, what didn't, action items. Focus on systems and processes, not individuals. Share findings company-wide. Post-mortems prevent repeat incidents and build institutional knowledge.
The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error by Sidney Dekker
Framework for blameless post-mortems and learning from failure
6 Step 6: Conduct regular incident drills and simulations
Step 6: Conduct regular incident drills and simulations
Practice responding to simulated incidents: outages, security breaches, data loss. Drills reveal gaps in procedures, tools, and training. Fire drills work for real fires because you've practiced. The same applies to technical incidents. Train under pressure before real pressure arrives.
7 Step 7: Build monitoring and alerting to detect issues early
Step 7: Build monitoring and alerting to detect issues early
Monitor key metrics: uptime, error rates, latency, resource utilization. Set intelligent alerts that reduce noise but catch real issues. Early detection = faster response = less customer impact. Good monitoring is preventive medicine.
8 Step 8: Maintain incident log and track MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery)
Step 8: Maintain incident log and track MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery)
Log every incident with timestamp, severity, resolution time, and root cause. Track MTTR over time. Measure improvement. Analyze patterns: do incidents spike after deployments? On weekends? Pattern recognition enables prevention.
