Incident Management Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Apr 28, 2026 4 min read

The Runbook Deprecation Policy

Old runbooks lie. The policy that retires them before they mislead.

Triggers

Last touched > 12 months. Last referenced > 6 months. Service retired.

Auto-flagged in the runbook system.

Owner reviews each flagged runbook. Update or retire.

Decision required; default is retire after 30 days of no action.

Runbooks with content like 'see Bob if confused.' Bob left in 2023.

Runbooks that reference deprecated tools or APIs. Confusing during real incidents.