Why the Scribe avoids personal observations during incident response

The Scribe’s compass during an incident: keep the record pure, not personal

When PagerDuty lights up a page and engineers sprint toward a resolved problem, there’s a quiet, steady role that keeps the chaos from becoming confusion: the Scribe. This person isn’t the hero who pushes the biggest button or the brains who crafts the clever workaround. The Scribe is the chronicler, the one who makes sure every move, every decision, and every shout gets captured in a clear, objective way. In short, the Scribe’s job is to document what happened—without adding personal opinions or vibes to the mix.

Here’s the thing: during high-pressure incidents, it’s tempting to slip in a quick impression or a feeling about who caused what, or whether the response “felt right.” That impulse is exactly what the Scribe must resist. Personal observations can muddy a timeline, blur accountability, and make future reviews feel more like a memory game than a real, useful record. The goal is a neutral, fact-based narrative that teammates can rely on long after the sirens fade.

What the Scribe should absolutely avoid

• Personal observations or interpretations

• Hunches about motives or root causes that aren’t verified

• Subjective judgments about team performance

• Speculation about what should have happened differently in hindsight

If you’ve ever tried to write while the clock is ticking, you know the temptation to slip in a vibe or a guess. Resist it. When the clock stops and the incident is reviewed, those personal notes become road hazards—misleading, biased, and tough to defend with evidence. The Scribe’s clarity is a pillar of trust. Without it, the record feels like a story someone told, not a reliable document of events.

What the Scribe should capture instead

While personal opinions stay out, facts hustle in through three reliable channels: timestamps, discussions, and attentive listening. Each one stitches together a clean, verifiable story of what happened.

• Timestamps of actions

• Record when actions started and stopped.

• Note who initiated each action, who approved it, and any tool or script involved.

• Include the exact time in a consistent format (for example, 14:37:21 UTC). If a time is approximate, mark it as “approx.” and note the reason.

• Link to logs, alerts, or runbooks so a reviewer can verify the sequence quickly.

• Capturing significant discussions

• Document key decisions, debates, and the rationale behind choices.

• Note who contributed each point and what outcome it led to.

• Capture exact quotes when a policy or decision is stated clearly, but paraphrase when the wording is murky, always preserving meaning.

• Record any alternatives that were considered and why they weren’t chosen.

• Listening attentively

• Listen for what’s being communicated beyond the explicit words: what is at stake, what risks were acknowledged, what assurances were given.

• Confirm ambiguous items by restating them and asking for confirmation (for example, “So we’re assuming the service will be stable if we reroute traffic through the canary environment, is that correct?”).

• Translate vocal exchanges into concise notes that others can skim quickly.

A small sample of how these elements might look in a live incident log

• 11:02: Incident opened by on-call engineer; initial symptoms noted: degraded payment API latency.

• 11:04: PagerDuty escalated to SRE on-call group; on-call team member acknowledged; runbook reference PD-IR-01 opened.

• 11:08: Discussion in on-call Slack channel about potential root causes: network throttling vs. database contention. No firm conclusion yet.

• 11:12: Action taken: traffic shifted to secondary region; rationale documented: to validate if latency is region-specific.

• 11:25: Decision: implement temporary cache layer to reduce API call load. Rationale: expected to blunt spikes while root cause investigation continues.

• 11:40: Post-action notes added: observed improvement in API response times; further monitoring required to confirm stability.

• 11:50: Final status updated: incident contained; root cause under review; post-incident review scheduled.

Notice what’s present and what’s not. The log sticks to what happened, who did it, when it happened, and why it mattered. It avoids guessing about why the incident occurred in the first place or who was to blame. That kind of restraint makes the record trustworthy for everyone who later reads it.

Why these distinctions matter in real life

• Clarity under pressure: teams move fast during incidents. A neutral record cuts through speculation, helping responders understand the sequence of events without wading through opinions.

• Accountability with fairness: when a decision is documented with its rationale, people can review the process without feeling unfairly judged. That’s essential for learning and improvement.

• Post-incident learning: a clean timeline plus decision rationales forms the backbone of after-action reflections. It lets responders ask better questions like, “What would we do differently next time?” rather than “Who screwed this up?”

Bringing it to life: practical tips you can adopt

• Create a simple, consistent template

• A quick, repeatable format helps you stay objective. Consider sections like: Incident basics (time, services impacted), Timeline (event-by-event with timestamps), Decisions and rationales, Actions taken, Evidence and references, Next steps, and Owners. It’s not about writing a novel; it’s about a reliable map of what happened.

• Use neutral language by default

• Favor verbs that describe actions and outcomes. Swap “the team failed to notice” with “no observation of a triggering alert was recorded until 11:05.” It’s more factual, and far less accusatory.

• Paraphrase with care

• If a statement is too chatty or loaded, rephrase to a concise summary that preserves meaning. If you’re unsure whether something is accurate, flag it for verification rather than guessing.

• Link to artifacts and evidence

• Always attach or reference logs, dashboards, runbooks, and chat transcripts. A reviewer should be able to reconstruct the scene by checking those sources.

• Capture decisions, not opinions

• Note what was decided, who decided it, and the intended outcome. If the team later changes course, record that too and why.

• Review and confirm

• After the incident, take a moment to review the notes with at least one other observer or the incident lead. A quick sanity check helps catch misstatements or unclear phrasing.

Common traps (and how to dodge them)

• The knee-jerk judgment

• It’s tempting to label a vendor issue or a process gap as the root cause right away. Resist the urge. Root cause analysis comes after you’ve captured the timeline and decisions. Your notes should set the stage for the deeper dive, not jump ahead to conclusions.

• The bias breadcrumb trail

• It’s easy to trace a fault line back to a person’s actions in hindsight. Keep the record focused on observable actions and verifiable steps. If you suspect a pattern, note it as a question for the post-incident review rather than a deduction in the log.

• Overloading the log with chatter

• Slack threads and chat messages are valuable, but they can overwhelm the core timeline. Pick the salient points that informed decisions, and summarize others with precise references to the exact messages when necessary.

Connecting the practice to real-world workflows

If you work with PagerDuty, you already know the value of a well-orchestrated incident response. The Scribe’s notes aren’t just “paperwork”—they’re a practical tool for improving agility and resilience. When a live incident ends, the document becomes a reference for future responders, a checklist for runbooks, and a record for stakeholders who need assurance that service quality is being protected.

A familiar rhythm helps here: while the alerting system quiets, the Scribe consolidates the sequence of events, the people involved, and the decisions made. Then, after the incident, the team revisits the notes during the post-incident review. That session isn’t a blame-fest; it’s a learning workshop. The objective is nothing magical, just a clear understanding of what worked, what didn’t, and how to tighten the gears for the next time.

A note on tone and audience

The Scribe’s audience can vary—from engineers knee-deep in the incident to managers tracking service health, to auditors who will want a clean, defensible record. Adjust the level of detail accordingly, but keep the core principle steady: neutrality. The words should feel like a relay baton passed from one teammate to the next—steady, precise, and unambiguous.

A few reflective thoughts to close

Think of the Scribe as the incident’s memory keeper. The memory isn’t about who yelled the loudest or who rushed to a fix first; it’s about what actually happened, when it happened, who did what, and why those choices mattered. The neutrality of the notes makes it possible to learn without defensiveness, to improve without bias, and to grow as a team with each incident.

If you’re on a team that relies on a robust incident workflow, you’ll quickly notice how much smoother the review process becomes when the Scribe stays within these boundaries. The notes won’t just fill a file; they’ll light the way for faster restorations, smarter runbooks, and calmer post-incident conversations.

Final thought: keep it simple, keep it true

Neutral documentation isn’t a flashy skill, but it’s powerful. When the pressure is on, the last thing you want is ambiguity. By avoiding personal observations and focusing on verifiable facts—timestamps, decisions, and evidence—you help the entire organization learn, adapt, and improve. That’s not just good hygiene for incident response; it’s the backbone of reliable, resilient services people can trust day in and day out.