Incident reports: What you need to know

An incident report is a document that captures information about a specific incident, unexpected event, accident, or near miss.

CrowdStrike unintentionally sent a flawed configuration update (Channel File 291) to its Falcon Windows sensors on July 19, 2024.

This update resulted in Blue Screens of Death (BSODs), memory crashes, and boot loops on approximately 8.5 million systems worldwide across various sectors.

The root cause, according to the official incident report released by CrowdStrike, was a validation failure in their content deployment process.

Although this outage lasted only about 78 minutes, it cost US Fortune 500 companies approximately $5.4 billion and triggered a global IT backlash from the public, companies, and Congress.

It also revealed that the CrowdStrike team needed to review its deployment process. As a result, they have implemented tightened testing protocols, adopted phased rollouts to limit potential impact, and introduced additional validation measures to catch errors earlier.

What the CrowdStrike outage taught us

This incident, for starters, demonstrated the importance of incident reports. They’re not just paperwork; they help your teams and shareholders understand what happened, why it happened, and how they can prevent the incident from happening again.

These reports also help companies, regardless of their size, engage in regular tabletop exercises and strive for true disaster recovery.

However, as important as they are, how to document one isn’t always obvious for various teams.

But what exactly is an incident report? When should you write one? What should it include? And how do you make it more than just a checkbox exercise, but rather one that will actually be helpful to your team’s growth and resilience in the long run?

This post answers all those questions and more.

An incident report is a document that captures information about a specific incident, unexpected event, accident, or near miss.

What is an incident report?

An incident report is a document that captures information about a specific incident, unexpected event, accident, or near miss.

The aim is to help the team identify the core issues, assess risks, ensure accountability, and develop preventive measures to prevent a similar incident from occurring again.

While the concept of an incident report applies to various industries, in the IT and software development space, these reports play a critical role due to the fast-paced nature of the ecosystem. Systems fail, bugs can slip through development, and deployments often go wrong.

Incident reports serve as learning moments within teams, improving system reliability, identifying patterns over time, and ensuring that the same incident does not recur.

What information belongs on an incident report?

For an incident report to be impactful, it must be structured, factual, and comprehensive. A good example of an incident report is the GitHub availability report for October 2023, which describes the two incidents that resulted in degraded performance across GitHub services.

Just like the GitHub report, a good incident report should include the following:

1. Incident summary: Stay at a high level and be brief, but give context and convey to readers what happened, where, and when.
2. Incident timeline: List out all key time stamps. When did the issue start, when was it detected, when was action taken, and when was the incident resolved? This can also help you measure response time.
3. Incident description: Describe factually what occurred.
4. Parties involved: Take note of everyone involved. This includes the engineers, stakeholders, and third parties involved. This gives a better understanding of the flow of action.
5. Root cause or suspected root cause: Include why the incident happened or what you think caused it, even if it’s still under investigation.
6. Action taken: What was the initial response? What was done to mitigate the incident? Did the service come back online?
7. Impact assessment: Who was affected? What was the impact and widespread effect of the incident?
8. Solution or resolution: Describe how the issue was resolved.
9. Preventive measures: What can you do to prevent this from happening in the future?

When are incident reports used?

Incident reports are primarily used whenever an unplanned disruption occurs that interrupts normal operations or poses a risk. These disruptions can include system outages, downtime, security incidents, third-party or infrastructure failures, and performance degradation.

However, depending on the organization, incident reports are created even for “near misses” or low-severity incidents—for example, customer-relevant incidents.

What are some benefits of incident reports?

Below are some key benefits of incident reporting:

1. Performance metrics

Over time, incident data can reveal patterns such as bottlenecks, frequent root causes, potential risks, and high-risk systems.

These reports also contribute to metrics such as mean time to resolve (MTTR), mean time to detect (MTTD), and incident frequency, which can provide insight into your technical debt and justify investments in infrastructure, tooling, or automation.

2. Transparency and accountability

A well-written incident report shows that the team takes responsibility (ownership) and is open to sharing details of the incident, especially for public-facing incidents. It also demonstrates an openness to learning and builds credibility with developers and enterprise clients alike.

As JJ Tang noted, when they faced an outage, “Facebook deserves a lot of credit for how transparent it was about the incident.”

This is because, while Facebook’s October 2021 outage can be described as SREs’ nightmares, it was also a pretty big learning opportunity for SREs in other tech companies.

3. Support for compliance and auditing

For organizations operating under regulatory frameworks (SOC 2, GDPR, ISO 27001), incident reporting demonstrates that they are following due diligence and are prepared for a response. These reports also serve as good audit trail documentation.

These aren’t the only benefits worth noting. In a later section, we’ll look more specifically at how incident reports improve your day-to-day testing process.

A well-written incident report can be your team’s secret weapon.

How to write an effective and well-written incident report

A well-written incident report can be your team’s secret weapon. But how do you craft one that’s both thorough and actionable?

1. Gather fundamental information, initial facts, and context

Speak with everyone involved and determine the “who, what, when, and where” of the incident. For more critical issues, such as unauthorized access or data breaches, specify the data that was breached, how it occurred, and the potential impact.

2. Take note of the issues and any damages or outcomes

This is where you describe the incident clearly and in detail, without any vague language. You should include error messages, logs, and any actions taken to resolve the issue.

3. Identify affected teams, services, users, apps, and software

Specify what and who was impacted to gain an understanding of the incident’s scope and determine the necessary communication and recovery paths.

4. Construct a timeline

Create a step-by-step sequence of key events from when the issue was identified to when it was resolved.

5. Take appropriate action to fix

Detail the steps and actions taken to resolve the incident.

6. Perform a retrospective and write a report

Dive deeper. What was the root cause (or suspected cause)? Was it a human error or a failed dependency? Did it affect another service? Were there any security complications? Has this happened before?

Once you have a comprehensive overview, write the report.

You need to be clear on what needs to be done to ensure it doesn’t happen again, and if it does, how to resolve it faster and with less cost.

7. Implement preventative measures for the future

You need to be clear on what needs to be done to ensure it doesn’t happen again, and if it does, how to resolve it faster and with less cost. This could be automated checks, monitoring, runbook updates, or, as in CrowdStrike’s example, additional validation measures.

At the end of the day, as stated in GitLab’s incident report section of the handbook: “The primary goals of writing an Incident Review are to ensure that the incident is documented, that all contributing root cause(s) are well understood, and, especially, that effective preventive actions are put in place to reduce the likelihood and/or impact of recurrence.”

Who is responsible for filling out an incident report?

The responsibility for writing an incident report lies with the individual or team most knowledgeable about the incident in question.

However, while it may be written by one person, input from various teams, units, or departments is often required, as collaboration is typically necessary in high-severity incidents.

Thus, input often would be required from the first responder (who detected the incident), the incident commander (who was assigned to lead the response), the SRE/DevOps team, the security team, and the compliance team.

The number of people involved may vary depending on the incident, organization, and severity of the event.

Can it be templated, and how can I create an incident report template?

Yes, and it actually should be. Working with a standardized incident report template assures that every critical detail is captured in the report. That means that every report released is consistent, clear, and complete across all incidents, regardless of who’s writing the report.

Besides maintaining consistency, a template reduces ambiguity and promotes cross-team communication. Various tools make this process simpler.

For example, Tricentis qTest ensures that you can link test results, user stories, and defects directly to incident records. This enables faster root cause analysis and better traceability.

To achieve better results, consider pairing these tools with automation and integrated testing platforms.

A Forrester study (commissioned by IBM), further quoted by Squadcast, showed that organizations leveraging AIOps and advanced observability tools experienced a 50% reduction in mean time to repair (MTTR) and a 50% decrease in the number of severe incidents.

What is an incident in software testing

In software testing, an incident is anything that goes wrong during a test cycle that wasn’t supposed to. For example, your actual test result doesn’t match your expected result, and now something is blocked.

It’s broader than just a bug in the code since the issue causing the defect is not always the feature under test. Sometimes, it’s a flaky test, a broken environment, a crashed container, or even services no longer syncing properly. Either way, the test stops.

An example is a test that keeps failing only on Chrome, while on Firefox, it somehow runs fine, or two microservices getting stuck because of mismatched schema versions.

In software testing, an incident is anything that goes wrong during a test cycle that wasn’t supposed to.

Incident vs. bug vs. defect in software testing

In IT, these words get used all the time interchangeably. But after reading the last section, you’re probably wondering: How is an incident different from a bug or a defect?

Let’s see how they differ in a software testing context.

Types of incidents in software testing

Incidents don’t all have the same consequences. Some might stop testing completely, some might slow it down, and some might stay unnoticed until much later. Here are the different types:

1. Functional incidents

These happen when the software performs actions incorrectly or fails to meet expected business or system requirements. An example is when users cannot log in, even with valid credentials.

2. Performance incidents

Performance incidents usually show up when traffic or data volume increases, and the system begins crawling. For example, when an API takes over 10 seconds to respond, the server starts having too many concurrent users.

3. Security incidents

These are the kinds of issues that quietly leave the system exposed to attacks where it shouldn’t be. An example is an input field that allows SQL injection attacks.

4. Compatibility incidents

This is when different browsers, devices, or OS versions expose weird behavior. The system works perfectly in one environment, but is completely broken somewhere else.

5. Usability incidents

In usability incidents, nothing actually breaks, but users still struggle because the flow feels confusing or unnecessarily complicated.

6. Configuration incidents

This incident shows up when there’s a problem with the setup, deployment, infrastructure, or bad environment variables, although the code itself is working fine. An example of a configuration incident is a Docker container that crashes due to invalid environment variables.

7. Regression incidents

This incident shows up when you fix one issue and somehow break another feature that was working fine. For instance, a password reset feature might stop working after a new update.

8. Integration incidents

Integration incidents show up when systems that are supposed to exchange information stop syncing the way they normally should.

For example, a payment service may complete the transaction, but the order system never picks up the response, leaving the purchase sitting there as unpaid.

Sometimes, corrupt data causes unexpected failures that developers never noticed during normal testing.

9. Data-related incidents

Sometimes, corrupt data causes unexpected failures that developers never noticed during normal testing. For instance, a null pointer error occurs due to poorly structured JSON data.

Incident report template for software testing teams

Using a standardized incident report template brings consistency to your reports, reduces ambiguity, improves reproducibility, and supports better root cause analysis.

Here’s a ready-to-use one.

How incident reports improve software testing

An incident report does more than just document what went wrong. When it’s done right, it can make your testing process better over time. Here’s how.

1. Better collaboration

When reproduction steps, logs, screenshots, and environment setup are in the same report, teams tend to spend less time fixing the issue.

2. Fewer defects escaping to production

When incidents keep getting documented properly, repeated problems start becoming easier to notice.

For example, the same API might keep returning 5xx errors every few test runs. Seeing repeated failures like that early usually makes it easier to trace the actual problem before it ends up in production.

3. Faster resolution

When teams already understand the severity of the incident and what’s actually causing it, they spend less time passing the issue around between teams. The focus shifts faster from “what broke?” to fixing the problem, which usually shortens resolution time.

4. Better test coverage

Over time, incidents start exposing the areas your tests are missing. Maybe a payment flow keeps failing on edge cases that your current test suite never covered. Those repeated gaps help teams know where new test cases or automation should be added.

5. Knowledge sharing

An incident recorded from months ago with the logs, root cause, and fix details might help someone else recognize the same failure quickly, instead of reinvestigating the whole thing again.

How Tricentis supports incident reporting in software testing

Tricentis makes defect tracking and test management a lot less manual and more seamless for QA teams, and that directly benefits how incidents get handled.

AI-powered tools like Tricentis qTest for test management and Tosca for automation keep everything inside one testing workflow, which makes it easier to catch, document, and trace issues before they make it to production.

Here’s how it works:

1. Seamless defect linking

With qTest, you can link failed tests and requirements directly to defects, giving you full traceability, so finding the root cause becomes much quicker.

2. Automated defect documentation

qTest Explorer automatically captures tester actions, generating detailed reports with screenshots, steps to reproduce, and annotations.

3. Analytics and reporting

qTest comes with a customizable dashboard that helps to track defect trends, test coverage, and quality metrics.

4. AI-powered capabilities

qTest Copilot uses AI to help draft test cases and even suggest which incidents you should fix first.

5. Integrations and traceability

qTest Explorer integrates nicely with Jira, Rally, and other Agile tools, so the whole team stays aligned without switching between different platforms.

With qTest, you can link failed tests and requirements directly to defects, giving you full traceability, so finding the root cause becomes much quicker.

Use case: How Fiserv cut major incidents by 65%

Fiserv is a global fintech leader that handles an enormous number of financial transactions every year.

Over time, after roughly 250 acquisitions, the company ended up with around 3,500 applications. Keeping testing consistent across that many systems wasn’t easy, and quality processes started becoming harder to manage at scale.

Problem

Testing looked different from team to team. Different tools, different workflows, and very little shared visibility. Manual testing was struggling to keep up, and even small issues could have a serious impact on customers and financial institutions.

Solution

Fiserv moved to a more standardized approach using Tricentis qTest for test management and Tosca for test automation. The goal was to get teams working from the same testing ecosystem.

Outcome

Here’s what changed:

• 65% fewer major incidents in the first year.
• A further 68% reduction the following year.
• Large-scale data testing is completed in minutes instead of days.
• Consistent testing processes across roughly 3,500 applications.

You can read more about the case study here.

Best practices for incident reporting in QA and testing

Knowing an incident exists is one thing. Reporting it properly is another—because a vague report wastes everyone’s time. Here are a few practices worth following.

1. Report any incident immediately

Document the incident as soon as it’s noticed. The longer you wait, the easier it is to forget exact details like the exact steps or error messages that could help someone reproduce and fix the issue later.

2. Stick to facts

Document what you directly observed instead of jumping to conclusions about the cause. Things like logs, failed requests, response codes, or unexpected behavior are usually more useful than assumptions.

3. Use a standard format

Keeping incident reports structured the same way each time makes it easier to scan and work through later.

4. Add clear reproduction steps

List the exact actions that lead to the issue so someone else can reproduce it.

5. Attach evidence where necessary

Add logs, screenshots, recordings, or whatever else you have when reporting the incident. They often capture details that are easy to miss in a written description.

6. Show expected and actual results

Outline what should have happened and what happened instead. This comparison often makes the problem much easier to spot and understand.

7. Classify the incident correctly

Try to place the incident in the right severity level. Without this, teams sometimes end up fixing less critical issues while more critical ones are left untouched.

Key metrics for incident reporting in software testing

Now that we have reviewed best practices for proper incident reporting, it’s also important to track metrics that measure whether those reporting practices are effective.

These key metrics help QA teams evaluate response efficiency, testing health, and process maturity.

These metrics give a pretty good picture of how well incidents are being handled day to day. If MTTD or MTTA keeps climbing, there’s usually something off; maybe you have some gap in monitoring, or the team is slow to react.

On the other hand, lower MTTR and fewer escaped defects are usually signs that testing and response processes are in a healthy place.

One thing to note is that you get more value from tracking these numbers over time. You will be able to spot hidden patterns or bottlenecks and have full support for data-driven decisions for continuous improvement.

When every tester writes reports incidents differently, triage becomes harder than it needs to be. Important details are sometimes missed, and the report quality varies.

Challenges in incident reporting and how to overcome them

Even with the right practices and metrics, your incident report might not work as expected or be skipped altogether. Here’s why.

1. Incomplete information

A report with no steps to reproduce or missing logs is almost useless. So, enforce a mandatory template that includes build version, browser type, OS, preconditions, and actual and expected outcomes, and ensure there’s no skipping fields.

2. No standardization

When every tester writes reports incidents differently, triage becomes harder than it needs to be. Important details are sometimes missed, and the report quality varies.

Like the previous challenge, using a standard template will fix this. It will keep the report consistent, make incidents easier to review, prioritize, and assign for fixing.

3. Poor collaboration

Incidents are harder to resolve when teams aren’t aligned. QA reports the issue, developers can’t reproduce it, and other teams don’t even know it exists.

Regular review and shared visibility help address poor collaboration.

4. Tool fragmentation

When incident records are scattered across different platforms, it usually results in not being able to track incidents properly. So, use a defect management system and integrate everything into it.

Key takeaways

Erin Doyle, a founding engineer at Quotient, once said after experiencing one of the worst incidents of her career, “After resolution, a blameless post-mortem process can unearth valuable insights. It certainly helped us…..Here again is an opportunity to provide pragmatic leadership, facilitating robust conversation without judgment, and orienting solutions based on a thorough root cause analysis.”

So, how your team responds, documents, and decides to learn from them is what defines operational maturity.

Incidents are inevitable in modern software delivery. It’s important always to see them as an opportunity to turn chaos into clarity and learn from it with effective incident reports.

To get even more out of incident reporting, consider using a monitoring tool to help you identify issues faster. Try out a Tricentis free trial today!

This post was written by Ifeanyi Benedict Iheagwara. Ifeanyi is a data analyst and Power Platform developer who is passionate about technical writing, contributing to open-source organizations, and building communities. Ifeanyi writes about machine learning, data science, and DevOps, and enjoys contributing to open-source projects and the global ecosystem in any capacity.