We invested heavily in runbooks.

We documented scenarios. We listed steps. We added screenshots.

And during incidents, people still asked for help.

Runbooks Assume the Wrong Thing

Most runbooks assume that the problem is known.

“If X happens, do Y.”

Real incidents rarely look like that.

Instead, people are asking:

  • what changed
  • what is failing
  • whether this is new or known
  • who else is affected

Runbooks start too late.

The typical runbook structure is procedural. It starts with a symptom and walks through resolution steps. “If CPU is high, restart the service. If that does not work, check for memory leaks. If memory is fine, scale horizontally.”

This works when the symptom matches exactly. But incidents are messy. The alert says “high latency” but the real problem is a database migration that started at the same time as a traffic spike. The runbook for high latency does not mention checking for ongoing maintenance.

People need to understand what is happening before they can apply a procedure. Runbooks skip the diagnostic phase and jump straight to remediation. That mismatch creates confusion and delays.

During high-pressure incidents, engineers are not reading carefully. They are scanning for relevance. If the runbook does not immediately help them orient, they close it and ask someone for context instead.

Incidents Are About Orientation

During an incident, the hardest part is not execution.

It is orientation.

People need to understand:

  • what system they are in
  • what normal looks like
  • what just broke
  • what matters right now

Runbooks jump straight to action. They skip context.

Orientation is about building a mental model. An engineer joins an incident. They need to quickly understand the architecture, the dependencies, the recent changes, and the current state. Only then can they make good decisions.

Runbooks rarely provide this. They assume the reader already knows the system. They assume familiarity with the components, the data flow, and the monitoring setup. For someone new to on-call or unfamiliar with a specific service, this is a huge gap.

What helps more is a system overview that shows normal behavior. Dashboards that visualize request flow, dependency health, and key metrics. Architecture diagrams that are kept up to date. These tools help people orient quickly.

Once oriented, most engineers do not need step-by-step instructions. They understand the problem and can apply their judgment. Runbooks become useful only for edge cases or destructive operations where precision matters.

Static Docs Rot Quickly

Systems evolve. Docs lag.

Runbooks that were correct six months ago quietly become misleading.

When engineers stop trusting runbooks, they stop opening them. At that point, the work spent maintaining them is wasted.

We have all seen this. A runbook references a service that was renamed. It includes steps for a tool that was deprecated. It mentions a team that no longer exists. Small inaccuracies erode trust.

The cost of maintaining runbooks is high. Every code change, every architectural shift, every operational improvement potentially invalidates part of a runbook. Keeping them synchronized with reality requires discipline and ongoing effort.

Teams often write runbooks during or immediately after incidents when the pain is fresh. The documentation is detailed and accurate at that moment. But as the system evolves, no one remembers to update the runbook. It becomes a historical artifact instead of a living guide.

This is worse than having no runbook. A missing runbook signals “figure it out.” An outdated runbook says “follow these steps” and then leads you down the wrong path. Engineers waste time trying steps that no longer apply before realizing the doc is stale.

What Helped More Than Runbooks

The most useful tools during incidents were:

  • clear dashboards
  • consistent naming
  • predictable architecture
  • obvious ownership
  • simple failure modes

These reduce the need for instructions.

Clear dashboards show what is happening now. They do not require documentation because they are self-explanatory. If the dashboard shows that API response times are high and database query times are normal, you know the problem is not the database.

Consistent naming means you can guess where things are. If every service follows the same logging convention, you know how to find logs. If every deployment follows the same pattern, you know how to check recent changes.

Predictable architecture means you can reason about failures. If services are stateless and horizontally scalable, you know that restarting or scaling will likely help. If retries are configured consistently, you know what behavior to expect under load.

Obvious ownership means you know who to ask. If every service has a clear owner in the metadata, you can find the right person quickly instead of guessing or spamming a general channel.

Simple failure modes mean there are fewer things to check. If a service fails fast and loudly instead of degrading silently, diagnosis is faster. If recovery is usually just a restart, resolution is faster.

Runbooks Still Have a Place

Runbooks are not useless.

They work best for:

  • rare but known actions
  • compliance steps
  • destructive operations
  • recovery procedures that must be precise

They should support understanding, not replace it.

Runbooks shine for infrequent, high-stakes operations. Restoring from backup. Failing over to a secondary region. Running a data migration that requires specific sequencing. These are scenarios where you do not want people improvising.

Compliance steps benefit from runbooks because they need to be executed exactly the same way every time for audit purposes. “How to rotate production secrets in compliance with policy X” is a good runbook topic.

Destructive operations need runbooks to prevent mistakes. “How to safely decommission a database” should be documented with safeguards, verification steps, and rollback procedures.

But these are the exceptions. Most incidents do not fit this profile. Most incidents require investigation, judgment, and adaptation. Runbooks cannot cover that.

Final Thought

Runbooks failed us because we asked them to solve the wrong problem.

Incidents are about clarity, not checklists.

Designing systems that explain themselves beats documenting systems that confuse people.

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