Metrics that actually reflect incident readiness
Leaders often ask for one number: MTTR.
MTTR is useful, but it’s an outcome metric. It tells you what happened after the fact, not whether you’re building the capability that reduces future risk.
Readiness programs need leading indicators.
The leading indicators that matter
1) Time-to-diagnose (TTD)
If diagnosis is slow, mitigation is slow. Track TTD as a trend, not a single value.
2) Time-to-mitigate (TTM)
TTM improves when teams have safe mitigations and the confidence to use them.
3) Runbook coverage and quality
Ask:
- Do we have runbooks for our top failure modes?
- Are safe mitigations listed first?
- Are verification steps explicit?
4) Consistency across engineers
If only your strongest responders can solve incidents quickly, your system is fragile. Measure variance across responders in simulations and real incidents.
5) Telemetry gaps discovered
A readiness program should regularly surface:
- missing dashboards
- unclear alerts
- untraced paths
- unknown dependencies
Those gaps are not failures. They are the program doing its job.
Why this helps leaders
These metrics connect directly to risk:
- lower variance means less hero dependence
- better runbooks mean safer mitigation
- better telemetry means fewer prolonged incidents
They also help prioritize platform investment: you can fund what reduces real operational toil.
If you want a readiness scorecard, start simple: TTD, TTM, runbook coverage, and consistency across engineers, measured quarterly.