Skip to content

Are Recovery Steps Clearly Defined for Incidents?

Type: DeepDive
Category: Non-functional
Audience: SREs, platform engineers, on-call responders, incident managers

🔍 What This Perspective Covers

Incidents are inevitable.
But how much damage they cause—and how long it lasts—depends on whether the team knows what to do next.

This perspective checks whether your system has recovery steps documented, accessible, and tested under pressure.

Situations That Demand Runbooks

  • Downtime caused by DB overload or network partition
  • Stuck background jobs, retries, or event queue buildup
  • Misconfig or flag change leading to user-visible errors
  • Service-to-service dependency failure with cascade risk
  • Authentication/authorization outages blocking access

⚠️ Failure Patterns

  • Only senior devs know how to fix certain issues
  • Steps to restart a subsystem require tribal knowledge
  • Manual fixes are risky, undocumented, or error-prone
  • No clear timeline for response or escalation
  • On-call fatigue due to repeated “figure-it-out” recoveries

✅ Smarter Incident Recovery Design

  • Write playbooks: if X fails, do Y (with context and safety tips)
  • Store runbooks with version control and team-wide access
  • Include not just “what” to do but “why” it matters
  • Automate common diagnostics or partial recovery steps
  • Review runbooks after incidents—treat them as living artifacts

🧠 Principle

Recovery is not just reaction.
It’s practiced response under pressure.

❓ FAQ

  • Q: Isn’t every incident unique?
    A: Yes. But most share patterns. Good runbooks guide—not replace—thinking.

  • Q: Where should runbooks live?
    A: Wherever your on-call responders will find them in 30 seconds or less.