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Incident Response Process

Overview

Structured approach to handling production incidents, minimizing downtime, and preventing future occurrences.

Incident Classification

Severity Levels

Critical (P1)

  • Definition: Complete service outage or data loss
  • Response Time: Immediate (< 15 minutes)
  • Escalation: Auto-page on-call engineer
  • Examples: Database down, API completely unavailable, security breach

High (P2)

  • Definition: Major feature unavailable or significant performance degradation
  • Response Time: < 1 hour
  • Escalation: Notify tech leads
  • Examples: Payment system down, user authentication issues

Medium (P3)

  • Definition: Minor feature issues or performance impacts
  • Response Time: < 4 hours
  • Escalation: Standard business hours response
  • Examples: UI bugs, non-critical API errors

Low (P4)

  • Definition: Cosmetic issues or minor inconveniences
  • Response Time: Next business day
  • Escalation: Regular development cycle
  • Examples: Styling issues, non-essential feature bugs

Response Team Structure

On-Call Rotation

  • Primary: DevOps Engineer (Infrastructure issues)
  • Secondary: Backend Lead (Application issues)
  • Escalation: CPTO (Major incidents)

Response Roles

  • Incident Commander: Coordinates response and communication
  • Technical Lead: Diagnoses and implements fixes
  • Communications Lead: Updates stakeholders and users

Incident Response Workflow

graph TB
    A[Incident Detected] --> B[Assess Severity]
    B --> C{Severity Level}
    C -->|P1/P2| D[Page On-Call Team]
    C -->|P3/P4| E[Create Ticket]
    D --> F[Form Response Team]
    F --> G[Investigate & Diagnose]
    G --> H[Implement Fix]
    H --> I[Verify Resolution]
    I --> J[Post-Mortem]
    E --> K[Schedule Resolution]

Detection and Alerting

Monitoring Sources

  • Sentry: Error tracking and performance monitoring
  • Infrastructure: Server health and resource utilization
  • User Reports: Support tickets and direct feedback
  • External: Third-party service status

Alert Channels

  • PagerDuty: Critical incident paging
  • Slack: Team notifications (#incidents channel)
  • Email: Stakeholder updates
  • SMS: Emergency escalation

Response Actions

Immediate Response (0-15 minutes)

  1. Acknowledge Alert: Confirm incident detection
  2. Initial Assessment: Determine impact and severity
  3. Assemble Team: Page appropriate responders
  4. Status Page: Update public status if customer-facing

Investigation Phase (15-60 minutes)

  1. Gather Information: Logs, metrics, error reports
  2. Identify Root Cause: Technical analysis and diagnosis
  3. Develop Fix Plan: Determine resolution approach
  4. Communicate Status: Update stakeholders on progress

Resolution Phase

  1. Implement Fix: Deploy resolution with testing
  2. Monitor Impact: Verify fix effectiveness
  3. Gradual Recovery: Ensure stable recovery
  4. Final Verification: Confirm full service restoration

Communication Guidelines

Internal Communication

  • Incident Channel: Real-time updates in Slack #incidents
  • Status Updates: Every 30 minutes for P1/P2 incidents
  • Stakeholder Alerts: Executive team notification for critical issues

External Communication

  • Status Page: Customer-facing incident updates
  • Support Team: Brief customer support on impact
  • Social Media: Public acknowledgment if widespread

Communication Templates

Initial Alert

🚨 INCIDENT DETECTED
Severity: P1/P2/P3/P4
Service: [Service Name]
Impact: [Description]
Started: [Timestamp]
Assigned: [Responder Name]
Updates: Every 30 minutes

Status Update

📊 INCIDENT UPDATE
Status: Investigating/Fixing/Monitoring
Progress: [Current actions]
ETA: [Estimated resolution]
Next Update: [Timestamp]

Resolution Notice

✅ INCIDENT RESOLVED
Duration: [Total time]
Cause: [Brief description]
Fix: [Resolution summary]
Post-mortem: [Scheduled date]

Post-Incident Process

Immediate Actions (0-24 hours)

  • Service Restoration: Confirm complete recovery
  • Initial Report: Basic incident summary
  • Follow-up Monitoring: Watch for recurring issues

Post-Mortem (1-3 days)

  1. Timeline Creation: Detailed incident chronology
  2. Root Cause Analysis: Technical investigation
  3. Impact Assessment: Business and technical impact
  4. Action Items: Prevention and improvement tasks

Post-Mortem Template

# Incident Post-Mortem: [Incident Title]

## Summary
- **Date**: [Incident date]
- **Duration**: [Total downtime]
- **Severity**: [P1/P2/P3/P4]
- **Services Affected**: [List of services]

## Timeline
- [Timestamp]: Incident detected
- [Timestamp]: Response team assembled
- [Timestamp]: Root cause identified
- [Timestamp]: Fix implemented
- [Timestamp]: Service restored

## Root Cause
[Detailed technical explanation]

## Impact
- **Users Affected**: [Number/percentage]
- **Revenue Impact**: [If applicable]
- **SLA Impact**: [Uptime metrics]

## What Went Well
- [Positive aspects of response]

## What Could Be Improved
- [Areas for improvement]

## Action Items
- [ ] [Specific improvement task] - Owner: [Name] - Due: [Date]
- [ ] [Prevention measure] - Owner: [Name] - Due: [Date]

KPI Integration

Incident Metrics

  • MTTR: Mean Time to Recovery (Target: ≤ 12 hours for P1/P2)
  • MTBF: Mean Time Between Failures
  • Incident Frequency: Number of incidents per month
  • Response Time: Time to initial response

Team Performance

  • DevOps Engineer KPI: MTTR ≤ 12 hours (10% weight)
  • Backend Lead KPI: Production stability ≥ 99% uptime (20% weight)

Continuous Improvement

Monthly Reviews

  • Incident trend analysis
  • Response time evaluation
  • Process effectiveness assessment
  • Team training needs identification

Quarterly Updates

  • Incident response process refinement
  • Tool and monitoring improvements
  • Team training and simulation exercises

[This framework will be refined based on actual incident experience and team feedback]