Escalation
GlossaryWritten by Burak YReviewed by Burak YLast reviewed 3 September 2026
Passing responsibility or notification to another target when the current step does not produce the required response. Escalation covers both the automatic case, where a policy advances after a timeout, and the deliberate case, where a responder escalates because they lack context, access, authority, or capacity. The second case should never be treated as a failure.
In practice
A responder who cannot get production access at 03:00 escalates immediately rather than spending twenty minutes trying to fix the access problem while the incident continues.