Google gave its outages ranks and commanders, borrowed from the fire line

the problem

Every alert screamed equally loud

the move

Site Reliability Engineering formalised severity levels, paged tiers and an incident command role copied consciously from emergency services.

the payoff

SEV levels and incident command are now default practice across the software industry.

filed under

Triage

was it genius?

same kind of clever

• 1797 · Napoleon's Grande ArméeNapoleon's surgeon treated the worst wounds first, whatever the rank
• 1972 · California fire servicesCalifornia's fire agencies built one command system after burning separately
• 2004 · Craig Fugate / Florida Division of Emergency Management (later FEMA)FEMA gauges a hurricane's damage by whether the local Waffle House kitchen is still serving