Incident Management Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Mar 11, 2026 4 min read

The IC Decision Authority

What can the incident commander decide unilaterally? The boundaries.

Can decide

Rollback. Failover. Any reversible action.

Communications cadence and content.

Customer-facing comms requiring legal/marketing review.

Decisions affecting > 1 team or service.

Spending money beyond a small threshold.

Empower the IC. Second-guessing slows response.

Postmortem reviews decisions; in-the-moment, IC has authority.