Yesterday, 50 people joined PagerDuty and Threat Stack at the PagerDuty Workshop in Seattle to discuss the latest strategies in incident management and resolution. Attendees heard from an amazing lineup of speakers including Threat Stack, Blackrock 3 Partners, Chef, Concur, Disney, and Nordstrom. The workshop focused on Incident Management in the 21st Century and yielded great content, intriguing discussion, and lively networking amongst attendees and presenters.

3 key trends from the event

1. Modern Operations teams are shifting the way they collaborate
   Companies strive to manage incidents more effectively and decrease downtime should an incident occur. In order to achieve this, developer and engineering teams cannot work in silos and must find the balance of agility and reliability together. Many people understand this model of collaboration as DevOps; however, rather than discussing what it means to implement a DevOps lifestyle, the discussion at the Workshop focused on a method of collaboration of a modern operations environment. Having this effective incident management process is a cultural shift, it prepares the right people with the tools they need to tackle the increasing complexity of incident management in the digital age.
2. Effective incident management systems require the right teams
   As discussed by Blackrock 3 Partners, whether responding to a public safety emergency, such as a fire, natural disaster, or a critical IT incident, managing the response must involve the correct teams. When incidents occur, the seconds and minutes it takes to address the situation can strongly impact the outcome of the resolution. As our digital world evolves and advances, the incidents that our organizations are faced with do as well. Utilizing an incident management solution to ensure that your team is prepared and has the best group of individuals ready to fix the incident are the key factors in reducing downtime and increasing uptime.
3. We need a new way to build secure systems
   Similarly to managing incidents, managing security should be thought of as a task for multiple teams. Security management is a cultural and people-oriented process. When organizations have a lack of information or tools needed to handle a security incident, it often generates more confusion and risk. As explained in Threat Stack’s presentation, the “best security culture is collaborative, not prescriptive.” Managing security incidents should be a process embraced by all involved teams to create a streamlined process to ensure the safety of your organization’s information.

A special thanks to Threat Stack for sponsoring the Workshop.

We hope to see you at the PagerDuty Summit in San Francisco on June 15th to discuss best practices for transforming software architectures and building modern operational environments, or at another PagerDuty event soon!