Since its launch in 2009, PagerDuty has been the go-to tool for organizations looking for a reliable paging and on-call management system. It’s been the operational backbone for anyone running an ‘always-on’ service, and it’s done the job well. Ask anyone about the product, and you’re all-but-guaranteed to hear the phrase “it’s incredibly reliable.” I agree. But reliability isn’t everything.

It's no secret that building a data-driven culture in a company is hard, but what is it exactly that makes this such a tricky endeavor? Contrary to popular belief, technology isn't the main hurdle. A recent survey reveals that only a quarter of respondents cite technological limitations as the primary obstacle to becoming data-driven.

I want to walk you through how incident management has evolved, drawing from real data and the experiences of some of the most sophisticated tech organizations out there. I'll also introduce you to a framework we’ve developed at incident.io: the Incident Maturity Model. This framework is the result of thousands of conversations with companies and provides a clear roadmap to help your organization improve its incident management practices—no matter where you're starting from.

On August 28th, 2023—right in the middle of a UK public holiday—an issue with the UK’s air traffic control systems caused chaos across the country. The culprit? An entirely valid flight plan that hit an edge case in the processing software, partly because it contained a pair of duplicate airport codes.