Rethinking Incident Management

Incidents are powerful truth-tellers. They puncture the idealized mental models that engineering leaders may hold about their systems, revealing how things actually work—warts and all. Transparent incident handling doesn’t just reduce risk; it brings realism into planning, prioritization, and technical strategy.

Why Incidents Matter

No matter how well we prepare, outages will always happen. What varies is how we prevent, respond to, and learn from them. The value of incident management lies not in creating the perfect system, but in enabling fast recovery and meaningful learning when things break.

Despite the widespread nature of incidents, most engineers aren’t fully satisfied with how their organizations handle them. This article explores:

  • Current industry practices in incident handling.
  • Best-in-class techniques for incident reviews.
  • Innovations from companies going beyond today’s norms.
  • Lessons from other industries.
  • Examples and templates to guide your own approach.

Note: This article focuses on what happens after an incident is confirmed. Monitoring, alerting, and on-call processes are out of scope.

How Tech Companies Handle Incidents

Over 50 engineering teams contributed insights into how they manage incidents. The responses reveal a surprising consistency in process and tooling—likely a sign that the companies responding already take incidents seriously.

The Typical Incident Lifecycle

Most companies follow a similar flow:

  1. Detection
    An issue is detected—usually via an alert or a human noticing something’s wrong.

  2. Declaration
    An engineer, often the one on-call, formally declares an incident. This typically involves a Slack announcement and ticket creation.

  3. Mitigation
    Engineers work to contain or resolve the issue. Some organizations designate an Incident Commander to coordinate efforts and stakeholder communication.

  4. Resolution
    Once the issue is mitigated, teams pause to recover. Most don’t expect immediate analysis, especially if the outage occurred outside business hours.

  5. Post-Incident Analysis
    Within 36–48 hours, a root cause analysis (RCA) or postmortem is initiated. The goal: document what happened, extract learnings, and identify improvements.

  6. Review and Follow-Up
    High-impact incidents get reviewed more broadly—by managers, specialized teams, or in company-wide meetings. Improvement actions are tracked and assigned.

Common Tools Used

Teams rely on a mix of tools for incident tracking and analysis. Popular choices include:

  • Slack (for coordination)
  • Jira, Linear, or similar (for tracking)
  • Google Docs or Notion (for documentation)
  • Dedicated tools like incident.io, Jeli.io, and Blameless.com

Lesser-Known Approaches Worth Exploring

Some teams are evolving their process with interesting adjustments:

  • Same-Day Research, Next-Day Postmortem
    Capture key details while the incident is fresh, but delay formal documentation until the following day.

  • Decompression Time
    Block time for affected teams to decompress and reflect before diving into root cause analysis.

  • Proactive “Incidents” for Risky Changes
    Use low-severity incident reports to communicate risky migrations that could cause user-visible issues.

Anatomy of a Great Incident Review

A well-run post-incident review helps teams do more than just document what happened—it turns pain into progress. Here’s what high-quality reviews tend to include:

🔍 What Happened

Start with a clear, narrative description of the incident:

  • When and how it started
  • Who noticed and declared it
  • What users experienced
  • How it was mitigated and resolved

Make it digestible—especially for people who weren’t there.

🕵️‍♀️ Why It Happened

Dig beyond the surface symptoms:

  • What conditions led to the failure?
  • Why did those conditions exist?
  • What gaps allowed it to persist longer than necessary?

Avoid a blameful tone. Use language like “The system allowed X to happen” instead of “Alice forgot to do Y.”

🛠️ What We’re Changing

Identify follow-up actions, and ensure each has:

  • An assignee
  • A due date (if possible)
  • A clear owner for tracking progress

Tip: Don’t aim to fix everything. Prioritize high-leverage improvements, and note which ones you’ve explicitly decided not to pursue right now.

How Companies Handle Follow-Ups

Every org wants to “close the loop” on incident actions, but this is where good intentions often fall apart. A few strategies that help:

  • Assign clear owners up front. Don’t assume PMs or tech leads will follow through—make it explicit.
  • Track in the same system as other work. Integrate incident actions into Jira, Linear, or whatever backlog you use.
  • Review in leadership forums. One team used a weekly “safety review” with senior engineers to review outstanding actions from recent incidents.
  • Share a monthly digest. Highlight recent incidents and learnings across the company to build culture and accountability.

The Culture of Incident Reviews

Incident reviews are only as effective as the culture surrounding them. Here’s what a healthy culture looks like:

  • Blame-aware: Mistakes are seen as system failures, not individual incompetence.
  • Curious: Teams ask “what can we learn?” rather than “who messed up?”
  • Transparent: Reviews are visible across the org—not hidden in private docs.
  • Routine: Incident analysis isn’t just for major outages; it’s a muscle you build by using it regularly.

Without these traits, postmortems become a checkbox—rote, uninspiring, and unlikely to lead to real change.

Learning from Other Fields

Some of the most robust incident review practices come from outside software.

⚕️ Healthcare

Hospitals use systems like “Morbidity and Mortality” (M&M) conferences to analyze negative outcomes. Key practices:

  • Focus on systemic contributors, not individual errors
  • Encourage open dialogue—even across hierarchy
  • Use structured formats to aid consistency

🛩️ Aviation

Airlines and air traffic control have invested deeply in safety culture:

  • Non-punitive reporting systems
  • “Just culture” principles: people are accountable for reckless actions, but not for system-induced mistakes
  • Regular simulations and debriefs

🧪 Nuclear + Industrial

High-risk fields emphasize:

  • Redundancy and fail-safes
  • Pre-mortems: imagining failure modes before they happen
  • Clear escalation protocols

These industries treat learning from failure as essential—not optional.

Final Thoughts

Post-incident reviews are one of the highest-leverage practices in tech. Done right, they can:

  • Prevent repeat failures
  • Strengthen culture
  • Spread operational knowledge
  • Build trust across teams

But they take intention. Reviews must be visible, supported, and safe. And they must lead to change—not just documentation.

Get this right, and every incident becomes a chance to get stronger.