Living note

The First 15 Minutes of an Incident

A small operational checklist for stabilizing a service before pursuing the root cause.

Early incident work should reduce uncertainty and user harm. Deep diagnosis comes after the system is stable.

Stabilize first

  • Declare an owner and a communication channel.
  • Confirm user impact with one trustworthy signal.
  • Stop risky deploys and preserve evidence.
  • Prefer reversible mitigation.