A major outage is in the news and your phone will not stop ringing. What do you do in the first hour as the engineering executive?
In a major outage, incident leadership means not running the incident. Confirm a capable commander, ask three questions, then run everything around the response: a business channel with comms, support, legal and security, a fixed update cadence, the trade-offs only you can make, and a shield for responders.
Answer
Short answer
In a major outage your job is not to fix the system. It is to make sure the people fixing it can work, and that everyone else gets accurate information. In the first hour you confirm a capable incident commander is in charge and get impact from them in three questions. You then set up a business track with comms, support, legal and security, fix an update cadence, and make the trade-off decisions only an executive can authorise. Throughout, you stand between the responders and the pressure arriving from the CEO, customers and the press.
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Likely follow-ups
- The CEO joins the incident bridge and starts asking engineers for a recovery time. What do you do in that moment?
- The commander on duty is clearly out of their depth. How do you replace them without slowing the response?
- Early signs suggest the outage might be an attack. How does that change the first hour?
- Your largest customer's CTO calls you directly. What do you tell them, and what do you not?
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