12.6Running a Game Day: Step-by-Step

T-60 minutes: Pre-brief

Gather participants in a shared call. Brief them:

• "We are running a game day exercise starting in 60 minutes."
• "This is a learning exercise, not a test. There are no wrong actions."
• "We will inject a failure in the [staging/production] environment."
• "Please respond as you would to a real incident."
• For production exercises: "Customer impact is expected to be minimal. If impact exceeds [threshold], we will abort."

T-0: Inject the failure

Execute the chaos experiment. Start the clock.

T+5 to T+30: Observe without intervening

The facilitator observes and documents but does not guide the response. The goal is to see how the team responds naturally. Only intervene if:

• The blast radius exceeds the agreed boundary
• The team is about to take a destructive action
• The exercise has gone on significantly longer than planned

T+30 to T+60: Wrap up

• Abort the chaos experiment if it has not resolved naturally
• Verify the system has returned to steady state
• Collect initial impressions from participants

T+24h to T+48h: Post-game review

Run a blameless retrospective:

1. Timeline reconstruction -- What happened and when?
2. What went well? -- Celebrate effective responses
3. What surprised us? -- Unexpected system behavior or process gaps
4. Action items -- Concrete improvements with owners and deadlines