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Adopt a Recovery-First Mindset
When an incident occurs, recover availability first then fix the root cause.
Minimize the impact of an incident by focusing on recovering availability quickly before fixing the issue. It can be difficult and time-consuming to fix the root cause, which often equates to longer downtime and a negative impact to your business and users. Adopt a recovery-first mindset that encourages your team to focus on bringing your org back to a stable, online state before deploying fixes. Then your team can take time to research and understand the incident cause and develop thoughtful solutions rather than knee-jerk reactions.
Here are ways to incorporate a recovery-first mindset during incidents.
| Potential Cause | First Try | Instead of |
|---|---|---|
| System or service outage (Salesforce or other systems). | Using a business continuity plan through which the IT operations team attempts to recover the system or service and minimize business impact. | Determining why the system or service is down and then trying to fix the problem before it's back online. |
| A recent change or release made to the system. | Reverting changes to a previous stable state. | Finding the root cause in the change or release and attempting to fix it immediately. |
| An unexplained issue not caused by a recent release. | Adopting temporary alternative processes for business continuity and providing monitoring and diagnostics information to appropriate subject matter experts (SMEs) who can investigate and attempt quick recovery. | Engaging every SME to troubleshoot the issue under pressure. |
