What Is Incident Severity, but a Lie Agreed Upon?

QCon San Francisco 2026

Session Incidents

What Is Incident Severity, but a Lie Agreed Upon?

Monday Nov 16 / 03:55PM PST, Seacliff ABC at Hyatt Regency, San Francisco

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$2,955, Conference (3 days)
Current pricing ends October 13th

Abstract

Is your incident severity a complex word problem? Do you arbitrate which severity an incident should be during the incident itself? Do you know what the difference between your severities are? Do you even have incident severity in your org? Let's talk about the lies we tell ourselves about incident severity, and how to find what kind of severities might actually work for your organization.

Topics

Incidents Incident Response Incident Analysis
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$2,955, Conference (3 days). Current pricing ends October 13th. All pass options.

76% senior dev or higher
1:11 speaker ratio
60+ practitioners

QCon San Francisco 2026 is a three day conference for senior software engineers, architects and team leads. An international program committee of working engineers selects every session. Patterns and practices, not products and pitches.

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Current pricing ends October 13th
$2,955, Conference (3 days)

Register