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Incident ResponseEngineering
Roll Back or Roll Forward? Making the Call During a Deploy Incident
A practical framework for deciding whether to revert a bad deploy or push a hotfix during an active incident.
NearIRM Team5 min read
From the NearIRM team
Product updates, on-call war stories, and what we've learned building alert routing from scratch.
38 posts
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EngineeringIncident Response
How to Write Alert Notifications That Speed Up Triage
Most alert messages waste the first five minutes of an incident. Here's how to fix them.
NearIRM Team5 min read
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EngineeringIncident Response
Cascading Failures: How Distributed Systems Break and How to Stop Them
Cascading failures turn minor issues into full outages. Learn to recognize the patterns, stop the spread, and design systems that fail more gracefully.
NearIRM Team5 min read
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Incident ResponseEngineering
On-Call Onboarding: What Engineers Need Before Their First Shift
A practical guide to preparing engineers for on-call, covering runbooks, shadow shifts, escalation paths, and readiness checks.
NearIRM Team5 min read
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EngineeringIncident Response
Feature Flags as Kill Switches: A Practical Guide for On-Call Engineers
How to use feature flags as emergency kill switches during incidents, with implementation patterns and on-call workflow tips.
NearIRM Team5 min read
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Incident ResponseEngineering
Game Days: How to Run Incident Simulations That Actually Help
A practical guide to planning and running incident simulation exercises that build team confidence and surface real gaps in your on-call process.
NearIRM Team5 min read
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Incident ResponseEngineering
Building a Service Catalog That Actually Helps During Incidents
A practical guide to creating and maintaining a service catalog that cuts confusion during incidents and keeps ownership clear.
NearIRM Team5 min read
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EngineeringIncident Response
SLO Burn Rate Alerts: Stop Missing Incidents and Cut the Noise
A practical guide to multi-window, multi-burn-rate alerting that pages you when it matters and stays quiet when it doesn't.
NearIRM Team5 min read
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EngineeringIncident Response
Toil in SRE: How to Identify It, Measure It, and Reduce It
Toil is the silent killer of on-call morale. Here's how to spot it, quantify it, and actually get rid of it.
NearIRM Team5 min read