Procedure for escalating incidents to a higher level of handling when exceeding time threshold or severity level.
Escalation is a mechanism ensuring an Incident does not remain indefinitely at one handling level: when the time threshold is exceeded or when severity increases, it is automatically escalated to a higher level.
Clear escalation procedure must specify: severity levels and classification criteria, time thresholds at each level, the responsible person at each level, and out-of-hours contact channel.
For mission-critical systems, this is arguably more negotiable than the uptime figure itself — because when an incident occurs, what determines the damage is how quickly the right specialist gets involved.
