What is Automated Diagnostics and Why Should You Care?

Incidents in technology are often measured by their immediate impact, such as downtime or customer disruption, but a significant overlooked cost is the human resources involved in resolving these issues. PagerDuty data reveals that 50% of a responder's time is dedicated to identifying the right individuals for support and understanding the problem, highlighting the need for automation in these initial diagnostic phases. Automating incident response, particularly in diagnosing and triaging, not only reduces the need for specialized expertise but also accelerates resolution times, thereby decreasing the overall cost and burden on teams. Traditional metrics like Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) are criticized for their generality, prompting a shift to more granular metrics like Mean Time to Triage (MTTT) and Mean Time to Investigate (MTTI), which better pinpoint inefficiencies. Implementing automated diagnostics can streamline the incident response process, improve efficiency, and distribute expertise more effectively across teams, ultimately enhancing the organization's ability to respond to incidents swiftly and effectively.