Incident Command for Startups

Intro: Why You Need an Incident Process Even with 5 Engineers

Startups often delay formal incident processes, thinking they’re only for big tech companies. But when your checkout breaks on a Friday night, chaos can follow without a plan.

Even small teams need a lightweight, repeatable process to reduce confusion, manage communication, and resolve incidents faster.

Roles and Rituals

Clear roles make incidents less chaotic. For small startups, you can rotate these responsibilities:

Role	Responsibility
Incident Commander (IC)	Owns coordination, prioritizes actions
Comms Lead	Handles external & internal updates
Scribe	Takes notes, timestamps, decisions
SME (Subject Matter Expert)	Deep-dives into root causes

Rotating roles prevents burnout and spreads knowledge.

Example Slack Template for Incident Channels

When an incident starts, spin up a dedicated Slack channel. Here’s a simple template:

Channel Name:
#inc-<date>-<short-description>

Pinned Message Template:

🚨 Incident Started: <short description>
🕐 Start Time: <timestamp>
👩‍💻 Incident Commander: <name>
📢 Comms Lead: <name>
📄 Status Page: <link>
🔧 Next Update In: 15 minutes

Updates will be posted in this thread ⬇️

This creates clarity instantly, even in a chaotic moment.

Incident Lifecycle

Incidents should follow a clear, consistent flow:

Triage → Assess scope, severity, and impact quickly
Mitigation → Stop user pain first, even if it’s a workaround
Resolution → Fix the root cause completely
Postmortem → Learn, improve, and prevent recurrence

Pro Tip: Define severity levels (SEV1, SEV2, SEV3) upfront so decisions are faster.

Blameless Postmortems

After an incident, the goal isn’t to find someone to blame — it’s to fix the system.

Key Practices:

Use 5 Whys to uncover contributing factors
Document timelines, decisions, and assumptions
Identify action items with clear owners and due dates

Example Postmortem Template:

Incident: 2-hour checkout outage
Date: 2025-08-12

What Happened:
Payment API failed due to misconfigured DNS.

Impact:
35% of transactions failed, estimated $12k lost revenue.

Root Cause:
Expired DNS record on secondary resolver.

Contributing Factors:
- No automated DNS monitoring
- No retry logic in payment API

Action Items:
- [ ] Set up DNS monitoring by 08/20
- [ ] Add fallback DNS resolvers by 08/22
- [ ] Improve API retry policy by 08/25

Tooling for Lean Teams

Even with five engineers, a little automation saves hours during high-stress incidents.

Recommended Tooling:

PagerDuty / Opsgenie → Automated paging & escalations
Statuspage / Instatus → Customer-facing status updates
Slack Integrations → Auto-create incident channels & reminders
Runbooks → Store mitigation steps in a central wiki

Example PagerDuty + Slack Integration:

Create incidents from Slack /pd trigger
Auto-populate IC, SEV level, and escalation paths
Reduce manual steps during critical moments

Case Study: 2-Hour Checkout Outage

Last quarter, a startup with 5 engineers experienced a checkout outage:

Impact: 40% of transactions failed over 2 hours
Initial Chaos: Two engineers debugging separately, no coordinated updates
Solution: IC was assigned, comms lead sent regular updates, status page was automated
Outcome: Mitigated within 45 minutes, fully resolved in 2 hours

Afterward, they documented everything, added DNS monitoring, and reduced mean time to recovery (MTTR) by 60% for the next incident.

Key Takeaways

Even small teams need a lightweight incident process
Assign roles: IC, comms, scribe, and SME — rotate them regularly
Use dedicated channels and templates for better coordination
Run blameless postmortems to prevent repeat issues
Automate status updates, paging, and channel creation to reduce chaos

A repeatable incident process builds confidence, reduces downtime, and helps your startup scale without burning out your team.