April 2024 Summaries

In this episode of The Debrief, Viktor Stanchev of Anchorage Digital shares actionable advice on incident response, covering topics such as defining what makes a good incident response, the importance of early declaration of incidents, effective communication during incidents, and more. This discussion is aimed at both seasoned professionals and beginners in the field who are looking for practical guidance to improve their incident response processes.

In a recent episode of The Debrief, Colette Alexander discussed the myth that asking "why" is better than asking "how" in incident response. She argued that focusing on "how" helps identify contributing factors and promotes psychological safety within teams, as opposed to blaming individuals. This week's guest, Dennis Henry from Okta, further explores this topic and its benefits for learning and team dynamics.

Incident.io recently launched its new on-call tool, which aims to become the single place people turn when things go wrong. The development of this product was driven by customer feedback and the founders' own experiences with similar issues in previous engineering roles. The team spent six months focusing on making sure there were no surprises for users, working closely with customer beta testers and constantly dogfooding the product. On-call is designed to follow major pain points of customers and revolve around improving their experience from getting paged to mitigating an issue to going into the post-incident world. The team plans to continue investing in reliability, observability, and resilience for this product.

This week's discussion focuses on debunking common myths surrounding incident response. Colette Alexander, Director of Engineering at HashiCorp, shares insights on misconceptions about learning and process in incident response. She emphasizes that asking "why" after incidents may not be the most effective approach, and highlights that documenting risk does not always equate to managing them effectively.

At incident.io, customer support is a top priority and everyone in the company plays a role in ensuring customers have a positive experience. The company focuses on building strong partnerships with its clients by actively listening to their feedback and quickly addressing concerns. This approach has led to high levels of customer satisfaction, as evidenced by their ranking in G2's Relationship Index for Spring 2024. By prioritizing good support at all levels, incident.io aims to build trust with its customers and create a better product through continuous feedback and improvements.

The text discusses the importance of having a good engineering culture in companies, regardless of their size or experience. It mentions that a positive culture can significantly impact team members and make hiring easier by attracting top talent. The author interviews Lisa Karlin Curtis, Tech Lead, and Alicia Collymore, Engineering Manager at incident.io to gain insights into the company's engineering culture and general perspectives on this topic. They discuss various aspects of culture, including its meaning, the importance of diversity, and empowering engineers to share their perspectives.

The concept of "shifting left" has gained traction in various domains, promoting addressing potential issues earlier in the development cycle. In incident management, this involves lowering the threshold for declaring incidents to become more proactive rather than reactive. Shifting left on incident management can increase readiness, improve understanding, enhance overall prioritization, and foster fearless communication. By embracing a broader definition of incidents, organizations can unlock valuable insights into their operations, fostering a culture of resilience and adaptability.

The company is thrilled to announce that they have been ranked #1 in G2's Relationship Index for Spring 2024. This achievement is based on several factors such as customers' ease of doing business, satisfaction with product support, likelihood to recommend the product, and number of reviews received on G2. The company has always prioritized customer relationships by providing best-in-class support, quickly addressing issues, and incorporating feedback into their features. In addition to this recognition, they have also won several other awards for Spring 2024 in categories like Small-Business Results Index for Incident Management and Enterprise, Mid-Market, and Small Business Implementation Index for Incident Management. The company expresses gratitude to its customers for their support and encourages others to check them out on G2 and book a demo if interested.

In this episode, founders Stephen, Chris, and Pete reflect on the first quarter of 2024, discussing key developments such as On-call, AI launch, and numerous feature updates. They also provide insights into the company's growth and future plans.

Incident.io introduces a new feature called "Photo Acknowledgement for On-Call Alerts" to enhance incident management and improve the on-call experience. This innovative approach replaces traditional button-based alert acknowledgments with personalized selfies, adding a human touch, boosting engagement, and enhancing accountability in incident response. To acknowledge an alert, users simply take a photo of themselves using the incident.io app's built-in camera.