October 2024 Summaries

Sam Willis, Product Designer at incident.io, shares his favorite memory of the company's On-call launch and highlights the collaborative design process across the business. He values the "Make it magic" principle and is proud to have worked on the logo. Sam enjoys the extra long weekends benefit and finds drama in the deal channels on Slack. His advice for candidates interviewing is to emphasize projects with quick turnaround times or trade-offs. The Design team at incident.io collaborates closely with other departments, and Sam would like to join the Technical Support team for a day. He believes companies need reliable incident management tools to manage incidents effectively and gain insights into time spent on them. Looking forward, Sam is excited about enhancing On-call's Insights feature.

Indexes in Postgres can significantly improve query performance by allowing for faster data retrieval, especially as table sizes grow. However, they come with a cost of extra disk space and slightly slower write operations. Therefore, it's important to add indexes only when necessary, such as for frequently run queries that filter out a high proportion of rows or require specific ordering. B-tree index is the default and most commonly used type of index in Postgres. Other types include GIN, GiST, hash, BRIN, and SP-GiST indexes, each with its own use cases. To identify when an index might be missing, tools like EXPLAIN ANALYZE, Query Insights, or performance dashboards can be used to monitor sequential scans on tables.

The Digital Finance Strategy is a European directive aimed at supporting and developing digital finance while maintaining financial stability and consumer protection. One of its key components is the proposed Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which addresses ICT risks in the financial services sector by enforcing a framework for operational resilience. DORA will apply to various financial entities, including credit institutions, electronic money institutions, investment firms, insurance undertakings and reinsurance undertakings. The act focuses on improving incident management at financial entities through better ICT risk management and governance, improved incident reporting, ensuring strategies for managing third-party risk, and implementing "resilience" assessments. Financial entities will be required to report on incidents every year, with senior management involved in the process. Non-compliance with DORA could result in significant repercussions, including fines of up to 1% of daily worldwide turnover for third-party ICT suppliers.

Eryn Carman is a Customer Success Manager at incident.io and shares her favorite memories, values, benefits, Slack channels, and advice for new hires. She highlights the company culture as "always getting better" or "never enough emojis." Eryn also discusses her favorite customer interaction and the importance of having a reliable incident management tool in businesses.

Incident.io is a platform designed by former Monzo bank employees to simplify incident management, particularly in terms of regulatory compliance. The tool helps organizations adhere to various industry standards such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, and SEC Cyber Security Reporting guidelines. It streamlines documentation and reporting, enhances communication and collaboration, and provides flexibility to meet different regulatory standards through customizable templates and audit trails. By automating incident logging and generating comprehensive reports, incident.io helps organizations maintain compliance with ease while ensuring a smooth and efficient process.

A SEV1 incident is a critical issue with high impact that must be addressed immediately. These incidents can seriously impact businesses, leading to lost revenue, unhappy customers, and operational disruptions. There are four different levels of disaster severity pertaining to an incident, ranging from Severity 4 (SEV4) to Severity 1 (SEV1), with the latter being the most severe. Key criteria for identifying a SEV1 incident include complete system outages, inability to serve customers, data loss, and high impact on business operations. When a SEV1 incident occurs, it's all-hands-on-deck, involving roles such as Incident Commander, SRE/DevOps/other specialist teams, and engineering/IT teams. Effective communication channels include instant messaging platforms, incident management platforms, video calls, email, and phone. Preventing SEV1 incidents involves proactive monitoring and maintenance, regular incident drills, and post-incident reviews. Proactive measures include continuous monitoring, automated testing, load balancing, regular software updates, and capacity planning. Regular incident drills help identify gaps in existing response plans and build team cohesion. Post-mortem reviews should focus on a blameless culture, promoting accountability and encouraging open dialogue. Post-incident best practices include conducting blameless post-mortems, effective documentation and learning from each SEV1 incident, and regular review of past incidents to reinforce lessons learned and maintain a focus on proactive incident management.

Meet Eva Camus-Smith, Head of Legal at incident.io. She shares her favorite memory of a company offsite in Marseille where she enjoyed hiking and swimming with the team. The value that resonates most with her is "Find a way," which aligns with her role as she works across different areas to find creative solutions for various issues. Her favorite benefit is the share option scheme, and she loves the #pets Slack channel. If she could go back to her first day, Eva would advise herself to ask more questions and get to know the teams better. She encourages candidates interviewing with incident.io to do thorough research on the company and its values, as well as think about what's important to them in a role. The culture at incident.io is described as dynamic, fast-paced, and fun. Eva looks forward to seeing how the business evolves over time and enjoys working with top-notch professionals. She would like to work in the Customer Success team for a day to better understand customer feedback and improve their services. The day-to-day of her role involves prioritizing tasks, attending meetings with different teams, and collaborating on projects.

The debate over whether incident reviews should focus on learning or tracking actionable improvements has recently emerged in incident management circles. This article argues that these two aspects are inseparable, as discussing actions can naturally arise during the review process and enhance learning experiences. It provides a framework for running a healthy post-incident review, emphasizing the importance of aligning the group on what happened, ensuring understanding, and identifying areas for improvement. The author addresses commonly cited concerns about this approach and suggests that learning and action are not opposing forces but rather complementary parts of the same conversation.

Navo Das is a Data Analyst at incident.io who enjoys the company culture characterized by being fast-paced, ambitious, and fun. He finds value in the company's Find a Way and Trust by Default principles, which allow him to work autonomously. His favorite benefit is the last Friday of every month off, which he uses for relaxation and personal tasks. Navo has worked on various projects at incident.io, including building a customer health score that is now integral to the business. He finds his role as a Data Analyst fulfilling due to its variety and close collaboration with stakeholders across the organization.

Jack Bridge, Management Accountant at incident.io, shares his favorite memories, values, benefits, Slack channels, and advice for new hires. He highlights the company's culture as connected, fun, and transparent. Jack is particularly proud of improving spending hygiene through software tools like Kodara. The Finance team collaborates with various departments, including Data, Engineering, Customer Success, and Sales teams. Jack looks forward to the upcoming Christmas party and a software migration project.

Incident.io emphasizes the importance of building trust with users through its incident management software. The company focuses on listening to user feedback and improving its product accordingly, fostering strong relationships beyond a typical vendor-client dynamic. Earning 18 G2 badges in Fall 2024 is seen as a reflection of the trust built with customers and drives Incident.io to continue evolving and providing real solutions for users' challenges. The company aims to be more than just a software provider, but also a reliable partner that supports its users throughout their incident management journey.