During a major incident, the Incident Commander isn’t the main channel for stakeholder updates

Who’s steering the ship when the storm hits?

Every major incident feels urgent, loud, and a little chaotic at first. Systems blink, dashboards spike, and someone needs to step in with a plan before the cascade takes you down. In the PagerDuty world of incident response, the Incident Commander (IC) is that captain who keeps the ship from spinning in circles. The IC’s job is to organize, coordinate, and drive the response so the team can work smoothly toward a fix. Think of them as the conductor in a high-stakes orchestra: they don’t play every note, but they make sure the whole thing comes together.

What does the Incident Commander actually do?

Let’s break it down, minus the mystery. The IC:

• Delegates tasks. A big part of their day (or hour) is saying, “You handle this, you monitor that, you own the remediation here.” They assign responsibilities to the right people so no one is duplicating effort or staring at the same screen in confusion.

• Makes final decisions. When options are on the table—like which service to roll back, or which workaround to deploy—the IC steps in to choose a path and keep the team moving.

• Seeks consensus. It’s not about wielding power for its own sake. The IC gathers input from the right teammates, weighs risk, and builds buy-in on the chosen approach. A united front is a faster, cleaner response.

And yet there’s a subtle but important distinction: the IC’s main beat isn’t to be the primary voice to every external audience. Their focus is inside the war room—on coordination, strategy, and rapid, tactical decision-making.

The one job that isn’t primarily the IC’s

Here’s where the lines matter. Communicating the incident status to stakeholders—think executives, customers, or public channels—belongs to a different role, often a Communications Lead or Public Information Officer. It’s a crucial function, but it’s usually handled by someone specialized in messaging, cadence, and audience needs. The IC may oversee or approve that messaging to ensure it aligns with the incident strategy, but they’re not the day-to-day face of external updates.

Why this separation matters

• Clarity under pressure. If the IC also has to craft press-ready updates, they’re stretched thin. A dedicated comms lead keeps external updates timely and accurate, while the IC keeps the internal gears turning.

• Consistency across channels. The status you share with your tech team—“ETA to fix,” “which service is degraded,” “what’s blocked”—is different from the external message you post on Status Pages or to customers. The two roles coordinate, but they don’t duplicate effort.

• Faster resolution. When everyone knows who owns what, decisions come faster. The IC can push fixes while the comms lead handles cadence, tone, and audience expectations. People on the incident floor can focus on what matters most: containment, investigation, and remediation.

A practical way to structure roles

In a real-world PagerDuty setup, the flow often looks like this:

• Incident Commander: owns the incident strategy, assigns tasks, makes calls, and maintains overall incident momentum.

• Technical/Platform Lead: oversees fault analysis, root cause exploration, and engineering remediation. They work with the IC to validate fixes and monitor progress.

• Communications Lead: drafts updates for stakeholders, coordinates with SPAs (Service Providers and Allies) if needed, and refreshes public-facing status channels (like Statuspage) and internal dashboards.

• Operations/Support Lead: keeps customer-facing teams aligned, ensures that users aren’t left in the dark, and helps translate technical updates into digestible messages.

This triad isn’t carved in stone, but it’s a reliable blueprint. It preserves the IC’s focus on decision-making and tempo, while the comms lead handles the narrative and cadence. It’s a bit like having a navigator, a mechanic, and a spokesperson on the same ship. Each role brings a distinct superpower to the table.

How PagerDuty helps keep the roles clean and clear

PagerDuty shines at incident orchestration, and the right setup makes the IC’s job smoother. A few features that matter:

• Runbooks and playbooks. Quick access to pre-defined response steps helps the IC and the team move with confidence. When a major incident hits, you don’t want to reinvent the wheel in the heat of the moment.

• Role-based routing. You can assign tasks to the right people automatically, so the IC doesn’t have to chase down who should take what.

• Cross-team visibility. A shared incident timeline and updates reduce back-and-forth and keep everyone on the same page, from on-call engineers to product owners.

• Status communication channels. While the IC coordinates, the comms lead can push updates through Statuspage, Slack, or Microsoft Teams. The messaging remains crisp, with a clear owner for external communications.

A quick, concrete scene: an outage in a critical service

Imagine a payment service goes down at a busy time. The IC quickly grabs the reins, calls for a high-priority bridge call, and assigns urgent tasks: engineers diagnose the root cause, SREs implement a temporary workaround, and the communications lead drafts a customer-facing update while a separate internal note explains to support why some users might see delays.

As the clock ticks, the IC tracks progress, drops in decisions like, “We’ll rollback service X if the mitigation isn’t holding,” and signals when it’s safe to broaden the incident’s scope or close it. Meanwhile, the comms lead posts a transparent, non-alarmist status on Statuspage and circulates targeted updates to affected user groups. The team moves in a coordinated rhythm, not a noisy scramble.

Training tips that help real teams function better

• Run drills with distinct roles. Practice scenarios where the IC leads, the comms lead handles updates, and the tech lead tracks remediation. The goal isn’t drama; it’s muscle memory. You want natural cues, like who calls the tactical pause, who confirms the fix, and who triggers the public update.

• Define a single source of truth. Make sure the incident timeline, decisions, and current status live in one accessible place. That could be PagerDuty’s incident console, a dedicated Slack channel, or a shared document. The point is: no one is left guessing.

• Keep communications lean. The comms lead should use concise language: what happened, what’s being done, and what users may notice. Reserve longer post-incident notes for a PIR (post-implementation review) or a retrospective, not the live feed.

• Build runbooks with real-world context. Include common failure modes, typical mitigations, and red flags that trigger escalation. The more you rehearse, the less you stumble during the real thing.

• Remember to debrief. After the smoke clears, gather the team for a quick debrief. What went well? Where did responsibilities blur? What can be improved in the next incident? That reflection is the fastest way to sharpen your response.

A friendly reminder about the human side

Incidents aren’t just systems failing; they’re pressure on people. The IC’s role is as much about keeping people coordinated as it is about technical victory. A steady headline in the room—“We’re handling it. We’ll update you as soon as we know more.”—can do wonders for morale. And when you pair that with transparent external updates, you protect trust as the heat goes up.

A simple, practical playbook to carry forward

• Define roles clearly before incidents happen. If you haven’t already, spell out who the IC, the Tech Lead, and the Communications Lead are. Assign backups so you’re never left without coverage.

• Keep a clean separation of duties. The IC drives decisions; the comms lead shapes external messaging; the engineers make fixes. It’s a ballet of responsibility, not a wall of busywork.

• Use tools to weave it together. PagerDuty helps you coordinate, while Statuspage and team chat apps keep stakeholders in the loop. The right integrations turn a chaotic moment into a controlled, confident response.

• Practice and evolve. Incident response isn’t a one-and-done kind of craft. It matures with every major outage, every post-incident review, and every new runbook you write.

Why the distinction matters in the long run

If you’re building a resilient incident response culture, role clarity is foundational. The IC is the strategist and driver in the heat of the moment. The Communications Lead ensures that stakeholders receive timely, accurate, and non-alarmist updates. The Technical Lead translates strategy into action, and the Operations Lead keeps customer-facing teams aligned. When these roles are defined and practiced, you don’t just fix issues faster—you preserve trust and reduce cognitive load for everyone involved.

Final thought: resilience is a team sport

Mastery in incident response isn’t about one heroic move. It’s about disciplined collaboration where every player knows their lane. The IC holds the line on coordination and decisions; the comms lead guards the narrative and cadence; the engineers deliver the fix. Together, you weather the storm and come out the other side with a story you can tell—one that shows not just that the system was restored, but that the team moved with clarity, care, and composure.

If you’re mapping out your incident response approach, start with this simple truth: clear roles reduce noise, speed up resolution, and protect trust. In the PagerDuty realm, that clarity often looks like a well-defined Incident Commander, a dedicated Communications Lead, and a capable set of engineers all moving in sync. And when they do, the chaos recedes into a pathway to reliability—one incident at a time.