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Incident Management

Complete guide for managing incidents in Burdenoff products.

Incident Classification​

Severity Levels​

SeverityImpactResponse TimeExamples
SEV 1Critical< 5 minComplete outage, data loss, security breach
SEV 2High< 15 minMajor feature down, severe performance issues
SEV 3Medium< 1 hourMinor feature issue, moderate performance degradation
SEV 4LowNext dayCosmetic issues, minor bugs

Incident Response Process​

1. Detection​

  • Automated monitoring alerts
  • User reports
  • Internal discovery
  • Security alerts

2. Acknowledgement​

Alert triggered → PagerDuty → On-call engineer
                             ↓
                     Acknowledge within 5 min

3. Initial Response​

  • Assess severity
  • Notify stakeholders
  • Create incident channel
  • Update status page
  • Begin investigation

4. Investigation​

  • Review logs
  • Check metrics
  • Examine recent changes
  • Review related systems
  • Identify root cause

5. Mitigation​

  • Apply temporary fix
  • Restore service
  • Verify resolution
  • Monitor stability

6. Resolution​

  • Implement permanent fix
  • Deploy solution
  • Verify fix
  • Update documentation
  • Close incident

7. Post-Mortem​

  • Document timeline
  • Identify root cause
  • List action items
  • Share learnings
  • Update runbooks

Incident Communication​

Internal Communication​

Slack Channel: #incident-[date]-[product]
- Regular updates (every 30 minutes)
- Status changes
- Action items
- Resolution updates

External Communication​

Status Page: https://status.burdenoff.com
- Initial notification
- Investigation update
- Resolution update
- Post-mortem (if applicable)

Communication Templates​

Initial Notification​

Title: [Product] Service Disruption

We are currently investigating an issue affecting [product/feature].
Users may experience [impact description].

Our team is actively working to resolve this issue.
Next update in 30 minutes.

Status: Investigating
Start Time: [timestamp]

Resolution Update​

Title: [Product] Service Restored

The issue affecting [product/feature] has been resolved.
Service has been restored to normal operation.

Root cause: [brief description]
Full post-mortem: [link]

Status: Resolved
Duration: [HH:MM]

Incident Roles​

Incident Commander (IC)​

  • Coordinates response
  • Makes decisions
  • Manages communication
  • Assigns tasks
  • Declares resolution

Technical Lead​

  • Investigates issue
  • Implements fixes
  • Coordinates engineers
  • Provides technical updates

Communications Lead​

  • Updates stakeholders
  • Manages status page
  • Coordinates customer support
  • Handles escalations

Scribe​

  • Documents timeline
  • Records decisions
  • Tracks action items
  • Maintains incident log

On-Call Procedures​

Handoff Checklist​

  • Review open incidents
  • Check recent deployments
  • Review pending alerts
  • Update contact info
  • Test paging system

Response Workflow​

1. Acknowledge alert (< 5 min)
2. Assess severity
3. Page additional help if needed
4. Begin investigation
5. Communicate status
6. Implement fix
7. Monitor resolution
8. Document incident

Escalation Path​

Primary On-Call
    ↓ (no response after 5 min)
Secondary On-Call
    ↓ (no response after 5 min)
Team Lead
    ↓ (SEV 1 incidents)
Engineering Director
    ↓ (critical escalation)
CTO

Incident Tools​

PagerDuty​

  • Alert routing
  • On-call scheduling
  • Incident tracking
  • Status updates

Slack​

  • #incidents: General incidents
  • #sev1-alerts: Critical alerts
  • #incident-[id]: Specific incident

Status Page​

  • Public status updates
  • Subscriber notifications
  • Incident history
  • Uptime metrics

Incident Documentation​

  • Internal wiki
  • Post-mortem repository
  • Runbook updates
  • Lessons learned

Common Incident Scenarios​

Database Outage​

1. Check database health
2. Review connection pool
3. Check disk space
4. Review slow queries
5. Restart if necessary
6. Restore from backup if needed

High Error Rate​

1. Identify error pattern
2. Check recent deployments
3. Review error logs
4. Rollback if needed
5. Apply fix
6. Monitor error rate

Performance Degradation​

1. Check resource usage
2. Review recent changes
3. Analyze slow queries
4. Scale resources if needed
5. Optimize bottleneck
6. Monitor performance

Security Incident​

1. Isolate affected systems
2. Preserve evidence
3. Assess damage
4. Contain breach
5. Notify security team
6. Follow security playbook

Post-Mortem Process​

Timeline​

  • Within 48 hours of resolution
  • Schedule 1-hour meeting
  • Invite all participants
  • Share draft beforehand

Post-Mortem Template​

# Incident Post-Mortem: [Title]

## Summary
Brief description of the incident.

## Impact
- Duration: [time]
- Affected users: [number/percentage]
- Services affected: [list]
- Severity: [SEV level]

## Timeline
- HH:MM - Event description
- HH:MM - Event description
...

## Root Cause
Detailed explanation of what caused the incident.

## Resolution
How the incident was resolved.

## What Went Well
- Things that worked as expected
- Effective responses

## What Went Wrong
- Things that didn't work
- Gaps in procedures

## Action Items
- [ ] Action item 1 (Owner: Name, Due: Date)
- [ ] Action item 2 (Owner: Name, Due: Date)

## Lessons Learned
Key takeaways and improvements.

Follow-up​

  • Track action items
  • Update runbooks
  • Improve monitoring
  • Share learnings
  • Prevent recurrence

Metrics and Reporting​

Key Metrics​

  • MTTD: Mean Time To Detect
  • MTTA: Mean Time To Acknowledge
  • MTTR: Mean Time To Resolve
  • MTBF: Mean Time Between Failures

Reporting​

  • Weekly incident summary
  • Monthly trends analysis
  • Quarterly review
  • Annual report

Prevention​

Proactive Measures​

  • Chaos engineering
  • Load testing
  • Security audits
  • Code reviews
  • Monitoring improvements

Continuous Improvement​

  • Runbook updates
  • Training sessions
  • Tool improvements
  • Process refinement

Next Steps​