Reliability · Flashcard
What does the Incident Commander do that the other incident roles deliberately do not?
- AHolds the overall picture and delegates, staying out of hands-on debugging to avoid tunnel vision
- BApplies the mitigation directly to the failing system, since command implies executing the recovery
- COwns the customer-facing status updates, since command implies speaking for the whole response
- DMaintains the running timeline in the incident document, since command implies keeping the record
Why this is the answer
The commander’s value is altitude: they keep the whole response in view, assign roles, and decide, which is only possible if they resist diving into a terminal themselves. Applying mitigations is the operations lead’s job, and a commander who does it loses the overview. Customer updates belong to the communications lead. And maintaining the timeline is planning work. Each is a separate role precisely so no one person carries all four.
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