4.7Building Incident Communication Templates and Runbooks

Template Library

Create a library of pre-written templates that can be customized during an incident. Writing from scratch under pressure leads to poor communication.

Template	When to Use
Severity assessment	Immediately when an incident is reported
Internal status update	Every update during the incident
Status page update (investigating)	First public acknowledgment
Status page update (identified)	When root cause is found
Status page update (monitoring)	When fix is deployed
Status page update (resolved)	When incident is confirmed resolved
Customer email (apology)	After Sev-1 or Sev-2 incidents
Partner notification	When partners are affected
Post-incident summary (internal)	Within 24 hours of resolution

Incident Communication Runbook

# Incident Communication Runbook

## Step 1: Assess Severity
Use the severity matrix to classify the incident.
Severity determines communication cadence and audience.

## Step 2: Open Communication Channels
- Create a dedicated Slack channel: #inc-YYYYMMDD-brief-description
- Start a war room video call for Sev-1
- Designate an incident commander and a communication lead

## Step 3: First Status Update (within SLA)
- Post internal update using the status update template
- Update status page using the appropriate template
- Notify affected stakeholders via email (Sev-1 and Sev-2)

## Step 4: Ongoing Updates
- Follow the cadence for the severity level
- Each update includes: current status, impact, actions being taken, next update time
- Keep the Slack channel as the single source of truth

## Step 5: Resolution Communication
- Post final status update (internal and external)
- Update status page to "Resolved"
- Send resolution email to stakeholders
- Schedule post-mortem within 48 hours

## Step 6: Post-Incident
- Write incident report within 24 hours
- Conduct post-mortem within 1 week
- Complete RCA and track corrective actions
- Send customer communication if required