5 collocation exercises on incident response verbs.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
When the first responder cannot handle the incident alone, they must ___ it to a senior engineer.
To escalate an incident means to involve higher levels of expertise or authority. Escalate is the precise incident-response verb, as in "escalate the incident" and "escalation policy." Promote is used for builds, raise up is not idiomatic here, and transfer over is too casual. On-call runbooks say "escalate to tier two if unresolved in 15 minutes," so escalate the incident is the correct collocation for moving an incident up the response chain.
2 / 5
The priority during an active outage is to ___ the impact, even before identifying the root cause.
To mitigate the impact means to reduce the harm caused by an ongoing incident. Mitigate is the precise incident-response verb, as in "mitigation steps" and "mitigate the blast radius." Solve implies a complete fix that often comes later, shrink is too informal, and cure is medical register. Engineers say "mitigate before investigating root cause," so mitigate the impact is the correct collocation for limiting ongoing damage while the full fix is still pending.
3 / 5
After service is restored, the team will ___ a postmortem to understand what went wrong.
To conduct a postmortem means to hold a structured blameless review of an incident. Conduct is the standard formal verb for running an organised process or meeting. Do up, run through, and make out are informal and imprecise. SRE teams "conduct a blameless postmortem," so conduct a postmortem is the correct collocation for the formal incident-review session that identifies root causes and action items.
4 / 5
The team agreed to ___ the issue to the vendor, as it appeared to be a third-party bug.
To flag an issue means to draw attention to it so the right party can act. Flag is the precise verb for informally surfacing a problem to a team or vendor, as in "flag the issue in Slack" or "flag to the vendor." Page is for on-call alerts, report is more formal (used for bug reports), and file is for official bug tracking. Engineers say "flag the issue to the vendor immediately," so flag the issue is the correct collocation for surfacing a problem to an external party during an incident.
5 / 5
Once the fix is deployed and stable, the incident commander will officially ___ the incident.
To resolve an incident means to formally declare it closed after the fix is confirmed stable. Resolve is the standard incident-management term, as in "resolved incidents" and "mean time to resolve (MTTR)." Close off, end out, and fix away are not real technical phrases. Status pages show "incident resolved," so resolve the incident is the correct collocation for the formal act of marking an incident as closed and service as restored.