For most businesses, managing major incidents can be intimidating. With a swarm of information coming from different directions, keeping things organized and maintaining clear, effective communication is tough. It only gets worse when there's no defined process to follow. This disorganization confuses everyone, delays responses, and increases the incident escalation rate. Enter the incident commander (IC).

I was visiting Queenstown, New Zealand last week amidst the horrible floods which quickly escalated. As an incident responder myself, I was amazed at the operations and how fast responders on the ground acted in evacuating and clearing the grounds. Over 100 people were evacuated in the middle of the night with zero casualties. A commendable job. Here are some observations I made and what we can learn as incident responders ourselves..

From the very beginning of Blameless, we had two vital missions. First, to offer a solution to what we saw as a mounting crisis of reliability by offering a comprehensive, easy-to-use, reliability platform. Second, to educate the companies facing this crisis on the fundamentals of incident management, cutting-edge best practices, and the cultural values that sustain learning and growth.

You’re in the incident channel rocking yet another incident. Comms are flowing, resolution is in sight, the team is grinding, and you’re feeling good. Then…

In the ever-evolving world of software engineering, the landscape is constantly shifting. New technologies emerge, best practices evolve, and how we build and run software continues to change. However, when it comes to incident alerting, it often feels like we're stuck in the past.