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CIO Decision HubPractical technology leadership

Case 03 · Operations · by Salah Eldesoky

Build 24/7 support and escalation

Twelve people, round-the-clock service. Make the coverage arithmetic close, set L1, L2 and L3 ownership, separate high-risk duties and decide when to escalate.

Support colleagues reviewing a Kanban backlog and ticket queue

Fictional scenario. Organisations, figures and outcomes are illustrative. This demonstrates decision-making, not a claim about a delivered project or an employer's position. Views are personal.

  1. Stage 1
  2. Stage 2
  3. Stage 3
  4. Debrief

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Explainer · not case evidence

Escalation and independent approval

  1. L1Triage and runbookRecognise, classify, follow approved runbooks, escalate on triggers.
  2. L2Diagnosis and recoveryDiagnose and restore service using pre-approved standard actions.
  3. L3Engineering and vendor ownershipCode, configuration and vendor fixes for root causes.

Standard actions

Pre-approved L2 recovery steps run without a meeting. Logged and reviewed afterwards.

High-risk change

Proposer, approver and executor are different people, with independent validation after the change.

Separation of duties applies to high-risk change, not to every L2 action.