Talk it through with Aurelius
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Aurelius · Work & Leadership
Knowledge + Guidance

Why do the same incidents keep coming back after we fix them?

You handle on-call well. The fire gets put out, the page stops, everyone goes back to sleep. Then, weeks later, the same fire starts again. This is not bad luck. It is a choice your team keeps making without naming it. The obstacle is not skill. It is that follow-through work never gets real time. Next sprint's features always win the argument, because no one in the room says out loud that reliability is losing. The postmortem gets written. The fix does not get built. What is within your team's power is simple and uncomfortable: decide, together, that the fix gets scheduled time before the next feature does. Everything else — better tools, better alerting, better docs — is downstream of that one choice.

◆ How this problem reads on the two dials
GuidanceKnowledge
More coaching
A little to learn
1:1 with AureliusWith others (a Pod)
Some one-to-one
Practise with peers
The core failure is a team commitment problem, not a knowledge gap, so most of the page should coach the choice rather than teach a framework.
How the two dials adapt to you →
What’s really going on

The incident is not the test. What you do in the calm week after it is the test. Lasting reliability comes only when your team spends real, scheduled hours fixing the cause — not just the symptom. Choose to protect that time, or choose to be surprised again.

🔒 What you’ll build togetherUnlock by starting
A moveIn your next postmortem, write one action with one owner and one date — not five vague hopes.
A moveBring that single action into sprint planning and give it real hours, before you add new features.
A moveWhen a fix competes with a feature, say out loud which one you are choosing, and why.
A moveEach month, review repeat incidents as a team. Name the pattern, not just the latest fire.
A moveCount, as a team, how many of last quarter's fixes actually shipped. Say the number out loud.
PractiseThe Follow-Through Audit · a Pod of 4 · 30 min

What changes unlock by starting

  • Fewer repeats of the same kind of incident
  • Postmortem actions that actually get built, not just written down
  • A team that can name its real reliability progress each quarter
  • On-call load that shrinks over time instead of staying flat

Related problems

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