Eventually, it happens.

A calamity happened, and your team needs to fix it.

Obtaining and sustaining focus is the path forward, and everything else will wait.

Start by clearing lines of communication and schedule, then work up from there:

• Communicate to any immediate command structure and co-workers that you are in triage mode, and must be undisturbed until it is fixed.
  • Give exactly one point of long-form contact (email), and shut off everything else.
  • Gently interrupt any intrusion with something like “I am dealing with an emergency situation, would I be able to help you with your problem tomorrow?”
    
• Prioritize incoming requests as low/medium/high, with a “disaster” tag for anything related to the reason why you’re using this checklist.
  • Anything not related to the ongoing incident are put aside for later, zero exceptions.
    
• What are the existing limitations to debugging and fixing the problem, does your team need additional resources, human or otherwise?
  • If possible:
    Determine disaster scope: who is affected and in what way(s)?
  • How does this effect mitigation efforts, if at all?

When you have answers to these questions, you’re ready to start identifying solvable portions of the problem.

Start small, give your team early victories, and know when and how to tackle the major problems before attempting to do so.

If you don’t know, ask.

If this is an oil spill, get relief workers on site immediately.
If this is a website falling over, get ahold of your system administrator and your backups person.

If this is about not having backups in the first place, contact us.

We’d be happy to handle the triage for you.