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MTTR

4 articles

Incident Commander: Role, Responsibilities, and How to Do It Well
MTTR
Incident Management

Incident Commander: Role, Responsibilities, and How to Do It Well

When a major incident hits, someone has to be in charge. Not "in charge" in the sense of knowing the most about the systems - in charge in the sense of coordinating the response, making decisions under pressure, and keeping the team moving toward resolution. That's the incident commander. It's one of the most impactful roles in incident management and one of the least understood by engineers who haven't had to do it.

Andrea BrownAndrea Brown
Apr 21, 2026
Incident Severity Levels: How to Define SEV0, SEV1, SEV2, and SEV3
Severity Levels
MTTR

Incident Severity Levels: How to Define SEV0, SEV1, SEV2, and SEV3

Two engineers look at the same production alert and disagree on whether it's a SEV1 or SEV2. One wants to wake up the VP of Engineering. The other wants to handle it quietly. Both are wrong - not because of their technical judgment, but because their organization hasn't defined what SEV1 means clearly enough for two people to reach the same answer from the same data.

Jasmine DeckerJasmine Decker
Apr 17, 2026
Incident Management vs Incident Response: Key Differences Explained
Incident Management
Incident Response

Incident Management vs Incident Response: Key Differences Explained

These two terms get used interchangeably in most engineering conversations - but they describe different things, and conflating them creates real gaps. Incident response is the real-time process of detecting and resolving a production problem. Incident management is the broader discipline that governs how your organization handles incidents before, during, and after they happen. The investments that improve each one are different.

Janelle McCombsJanelle McCombs
Apr 14, 2026
MTTR, MTTD, MTBF: The Incident Metrics That Actually Matter
Mean Time to Response
MTTR

MTTR, MTTD, MTBF: The Incident Metrics That Actually Matter

MTTR dropped from 40 min to 10 min. But that's only 70% of the picture. The real win: engineers sleeping through on-call shifts. Mean time metrics are the most tracked reliability numbers in engineering - and the most misunderstood. This guide covers what each one actually measures, how to calculate them correctly, and how to use them to drive real improvement instead of just better-looking dashboards.

Jake DavidsJake Davids
Mar 31, 2026

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