Post-Incident Reviews

Chapter 1. Broken Incentives and Initiatives

All companies have and rely on technology in numerous and growing ways. Increasingly, the systems that make up these technologies are expected to be “highly available,” particularly when the accessibility and reliability of the system tie directly to the organization’s bottom line. For a growing number of companies, the modern world expects 100% uptime and around-the-clock support of their services.

Advancements in the way we develop, deliver, and support IT services within an organization are a primary concern of today’s technology leaders. Delivering innovative and helpful service to internal and external stakeholders at a high level of quality, reliability, and availability is what DevOps has set out to achieve. But with these advancements come new challenges. How can we ensure that our systems not only provide the level of service we have promised our customers, but also continue a trajectory of improvement in terms of people, process, and technology so that these key elements may interact to help detect and avoid problems, as well as solve them faster when they happen?

Anyone who has worked with technology can attest that eventually something will go wrong. It’s not a matter of if, but when. And there is a direct relationship between the size and complexity of our systems and the variety of factors that contribute to both working and non-working IT services.

In most companies, success and leadership are about maintaining control—control ...