Incident response is a critical aspect of software engineering – the process of identifying, responding to, and resolving incidents that occur within a software system. In order to effectively respond to incidents, software engineers can use the Incident Command System (ICS), a structured approach to incident management that is commonly used in emergency response situations.
The ICS is a standardized approach to managing incidents that involves a hierarchical system of management and coordination. The system is designed to promote effective communication, coordination, and decision-making during incidents. The ICS is made up of five functional areas:
- Command: This is the overall direction and control of the incident. The command function is responsible for establishing priorities, making decisions, and delegating tasks.
- Operations: This function is responsible for carrying out the tactical objectives of the incident. This includes managing resources, implementing tactics, and ensuring safety.
- Planning: This function is responsible for developing and maintaining the incident action plan. This includes collecting and analyzing information, developing strategies, and identifying resources.
- Logistics: This function is responsible for providing the resources and support necessary to carry out the incident action plan. This includes managing supplies, facilities, and equipment.
- Finance/Administration: This function is responsible for managing the financial and administrative aspects of the incident. This includes budgeting, procurement, and documentation.
The ICS can be applied to incident response in software engineering by adapting the system to fit the unique needs of the software development process. This involves identifying the functional areas that are relevant to software engineering and adapting the ICS structure accordingly. For example:
- Command: This function would be responsible for overall management and decision-making related to incident response in software engineering. This would include establishing priorities, delegating tasks, and ensuring that the response is coordinated and effective.
- Operations: This function would be responsible for carrying out the technical objectives of the incident response. This would include managing resources, implementing tactics, and ensuring safety.
- Planning: This function would be responsible for developing and maintaining the incident response plan. This would include identifying the scope of the incident, analyzing data, and developing strategies for resolving the incident.
- Logistics: This function would be responsible for providing the resources and support necessary for incident response. This would include managing equipment, software, and other resources needed for resolving the incident.
- Finance/Administration: This function would be responsible for managing the financial and administrative aspects of incident response. This would include budgeting, procurement, and documentation.
Another concept to consider is corrective and preventive action (CAPA or simply corrective action). During an incident, corrective action is the most important thing. Often after an incident we forget preventative action – how are we going to prevent issues like this in the future? Especially think of related errors – often for an error to become an incident, there needs to be failures at multiple levels. The initial corrective action is often to fix one of these multiple failures – but if you don’t go back and fix the other failures you’ll have a boobytrap for a future developer to step on and have the issue again.