Author Ryan McDonald

Ryan McDonald

Ryan McDonald has advocated for resilient software in diverse roles, as an engineer, agilist, and incident commander. After years leading backcountry expeditions at Outward Bound, software incidents were a lower-risk way to scratch the responder itch.

Ryan McDonald• 2022-11-08

3 questions to ask in the build vs buy debate for incident response tooling

In many cases, there are components that go into building and running an incident management tool that aren’t considered. These are the three most common ones.

Ryan McDonald• 2022-11-02

Getting started with severity levels

Incidents can take many forms. How you respond to the incident will vary based on the impact of the incident. And that’s where severity comes into play.

Ryan McDonald• 2022-06-21

What leading Outward Bound expeditions taught me about incident management

There are a number of lessons I learned guiding weeks-long backcountry leadership courses for teens that I carried with me into my roles in incident management. In this blog post, I’ll share three that stand out.

Ryan McDonald• 2022-03-11

When to hire an Incident Commander

Do you need a dedicated incident commander? We will explore what an incident commander is, what forms the role can take, and when you should consider the addition of a dedicated incident commander to your organization.

incident commander

incident response

explainer