The Blameless Complete Guide to Incident Management (Part 1)

Key Takeaways

1. The most important thing to know is what you’ll do while things are going wrong. No matter how much preparation and learning you do, there will always be things you aren’t ready for. 
2. Don’t hesitate to declare an incident: if you aren’t sure, remember there’s a reason you’re concerned enough to consider declaring an incident. Even if there’s nothing wrong, this is still an opportunity to collaborate and learn.
3. Diagnose and solve with deliberation: To stay grounded and focused, come up with a hypothesis of what is causing the problem, test it, and adjust and retest based on what you see.
4. Keep communication flowing: Continually communicate in a central area, such as a dedicated Slack channel set up for the incident. Appoint one person as the designated Communications Lead whose sole job it is to ensure internal and external stakeholders are being communicated with.
5. Escalate and ask for help: It can be tough to admit that you aren’t sure what to try, or that you don’t have the resources you need to continue. But getting help is essential to solving some incidents, so do your best to ask when it’s necessary.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. During an incident

Don’t hesitate to declare an incident

Diagnose and solve with deliberation

Keep communication flowing

Escalate and ask for help

3. Learning from incidents

Incident retrospectives

Patterns in incidents

4. Conclusion & next steps