Against Incident Severities and in Favor of Incident Types

Honeycomb conducted an internal experiment to revamp its incident response strategy by moving away from the traditional severity-based system to a more descriptive type-based approach. The conventional method, which uses a linear severity scale, often creates challenges due to its inflexibility and the varied interpretations by different stakeholders within an organization. To address these issues, Honeycomb developed a set of descriptive categories such as "Ambiguous," "Internal," "Security," "Time bomb," "Isolated," and "Major" to better align incident responses with the specific contexts and needs of various departments. This approach aims to provide clarity and facilitate tailored responses while addressing the inherent complexity of incident management. Despite some challenges, such as the inability to change incident types post-initiation, the new system has been well-received and continues to be refined, with the majority of incidents falling into the "ambiguous" category, highlighting the system's design intent to handle uncertainty effectively.