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Software Engineering vocabulary · Debugging and Troubleshooting

Runbook

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈrʌnbʊk/nounCommon term

In software engineering, runbook means: A written step-by-step guide for handling a specific task or alert, such as restarting a service or clearing a full disk, so anyone on call can follow it.

In Turkish: operasyon kılavuzu, müdahale talimatnamesi, runbook

How it is used

Good alerts link to a runbook. Teams write, update and automate runbooks. 'Playbook' is used in a similar way, often for broader incident procedures. Runbooks are kept in wikis or in the code repository.

Example sentences

  1. Follow the runbook for this alert: check the queue, then restart the worker pods.

  2. The runbook was out of date, so the on-call engineer lost twenty minutes.

Common collocations

  • follow the runbook
  • update the runbook
  • runbook link
  • automated runbook
  • on-callAvailable outside normal hours to respond quickly if an alert or incident happens. Engineers take turns being on call for their services.
  • alertAn automatic notification sent to engineers when a monitored value crosses a limit or something looks wrong, for example when the error rate is too high.
  • incidentAn unplanned event that disrupts a service or makes it worse for users, such as an outage, a big slowdown or a data problem, and that needs a quick response.
  • postmortemA written review after an incident that explains what happened, the impact, the timeline, the root cause and the actions that will stop it happening again.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Debugging and Troubleshooting

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