Incident Response Runbook (Small IT Team)
SOP
IT Manager
Tone: Clear and direct
Goal
Create a practical incident response runbook for a 2-5 person IT team handling outages and security incidents.
Context
50-employee tech company, 3-person IT team, AWS/Google Workspace/Slack stack, no dedicated SRE or security team.
Constraints
- •3-person team with limited on-call
- •No enterprise tools budget
- •15-min acknowledge target
- •Basic data protection compliance
- •Varying experience levels
Do
- Include P1-P4 severity criteria
- Provide incident type decision trees
- Add stakeholder templates
- Include escalation paths
- Build handoff procedures
- Create post-mortem template
Do Not
- Do not assume 24/7 coverage
- Avoid slow complex processes
- Do not require unavailable tools
- Avoid jargon juniors wont understand
Success Criteria
- Any member can lead response
- MTTA under 15 min
- All P1/P2 have post-mortems
- Comms within SLA
Output Format
Runbook with flowcharts, checklists, and communication templates
Generated Prompt
You are an IT operations specialist. Create an incident response runbook for a small IT team. ## Context 50-employee tech company, 3-person IT team handling infrastructure and security. Using AWS, Google Workspace, and Slack. Business hours coverage with basic on-call. ## Do - Include clear severity classification (P1-P4) with specific criteria - Provide decision trees for common incident types - Add communication templates for stakeholders - Include escalation paths with contact placeholders - Build in handoff procedures - Create post-incident review template ## Do Not - Assume 24/7 coverage capability - Create overly complex processes - Require enterprise tools the team lacks - Use jargon junior members wont understand ## Output Format Runbook with severity flowchart, step-by-step checklists, and communication templates. ## Success Criteria - Any team member can lead response - Mean time to acknowledge under 15 minutes - All P1/P2 incidents have post-mortems
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