Many organizations have some kind of incident response process to coordinate during a major service outage. Some operationally mature companies incorporate a formal Incident Commander role in their process for a faster, more effective response. The Incident Commander serves as the final decision-maker during a major incident, delegating tasks and listening to input from subject matter experts in order to bring the incident to resolution. Whether or not a company has a formal process that includes an Incident Commander, most companies believe that your most senior engineer is best suited to lead an incident response. I challenge this assumption.

I have learned first hand that you do not need to be highly technical, let alone senior, to effectively lead a coordinated response to a major incident. Comfort with a structured process and soft skills such as communication are actually more important than technical knowledge for an effective Incident Commander.

In this workshop, attendees will:

• Be introduced to the Incident Command System and learn how it can be adapted to other industries.
• Walk through the basics of incident response best practices.
• Discuss examples of formal incident response from multiple organizations.
• Have the opportunity to share their real-world experiences with each other.