210 lines
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HTML
210 lines
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HTML
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<h1 class="title" itemprop="name">Incident updates, interruptions and the 30 minute window</h1>
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<div class="date"><time datetime='Wed, Jun 24, 2020' data-updated="true" itemprop="datePublished">Wed, Jun 24, 2020</time>
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<div class="tags">
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<a href="https://www.unixdaemon.net/categories/sysadmin"> sysadmin </a>
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</div>
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<div class="entry-content" itemprop="articleBody"><p>For most companies Incident Commander or Incident Manager is not a
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specific job, it’s a role you may take on when something has gone, often
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horribly, wrong and you need to quickly unite an adhoc group into a team
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to resolve it. The incident commander should be the point of contact,
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and source of truth, about your incident and to do that successfully
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they’ll need to be updated and kept informed about what’s happening.
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Depending on how experienced they are in the role this can be a very
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light touch experience or it can feel like being constantly nagged to
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put the washing away while someone burns money nearby.</p>
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<p>I’ve been involved in a fair few incidents over the years and one of the
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best approaches I’ve seen to handling updates and interruptions was from
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someone who had an amazing internal clock; or a watch we never noticed.
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When handling an incident he’d essentially give himself a 30 minute,
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reset-able, window of time. Once he’d been given the initial
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introduction to the incident he’d step back, handle the communication
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and anything else the incident responders has asked for and wait for
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about 30 minutes.</p>
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<p>If no one gave him any new information or status updates he’d consider
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it an invitation to interrupt and ask what was going on. Once he’d been
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updated he’d move back and let the team run with the problem. If someone
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gave him an update before the 30ish minutes were up he’d reset his
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timer, leave you alone and try to get whatever you’d asked for. I don’t
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know if it was just a well chosen period based on experience or the
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limit of his patience but 30 minutes was often enough to stop people
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rabbit holing while the fires were raging.</p>
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<p>Once I’d left the team he often managed incidents for and became one of
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his internal customers I began to notice that everyone in his area
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developed the subconscious habit of delivering their status updates
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every 25 minutes or so, even when he wasn’t the incident manager for
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a specific incident. I never discovered if this was all a deliberate
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attempt to set the culture he wanted or he was just being himself but as
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someone handling an incident I always appreciated the time and
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predictability of his involement. Thanks to LinkedIn and Twitter I could
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probably track him down and ask but I’ve always liked the idea it was
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just him being himself.</p>
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</div>
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<footer id="footer" class="inner">Copyright © 2025
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Dean Wilson
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