comms

IT Operations Communication

Templates and guidance for stakeholder communication during incidents, changes, and maintenance. All output in English by default; preview in the user's language before writing to file.

Related Skills

• /incident — loads this skill for incident notifications
• /statuspage — loads this skill for status page updates
• itil — provides priority classification that determines communication tone

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Core Principles

1. Impact-focused, not technical — describe what users experience, not what broke internally
2. Honest but controlled — acknowledge the issue without exposing sensitive infrastructure details
3. Predictable cadence — always include "Next update by [time]" to reduce anxiety
4. Severity-appropriate tone — match urgency to priority level
5. Audience-aware — tailor detail level to the recipient group

Tone by Priority Level

Priority	Tone	Cadence	Example Opening
P1	Urgent, direct, action-oriented	Every 15-30 min	"We are experiencing a major service disruption..."
P2	Serious, informative	Every 30-60 min	"We are aware of issues affecting..."
P3	Informative, measured	When meaningful updates occur	"Some users may notice..."
P4	Routine, brief	At resolution	"A minor issue has been identified..."

Audience Adaptation

Audience	Detail Level	Focus
End users	Minimal technical detail	What is affected, workaround, ETA
Management	Business impact + timeline	Revenue/productivity impact, resource allocation, ETA
Technical teams	Full technical detail	Systems affected, error codes, diagnostic steps
External (statuspage)	Impact-focused, no internal names	Service status, user-facing impact, ETA

What to Include vs Exclude

Include	Exclude
Affected service (user-facing name)	Internal system names, IP addresses
User impact description	Root cause details during active incidents
Current status and actions being taken	Names of individuals responsible
Estimated time to resolution (if known)	Security-sensitive information
Workaround instructions (if available)	Blame or fault attribution
Next update time	Speculative root cause

Communication Structure

Every operational communication follows this structure:

1. Status — current state (one sentence)
2. Impact — what users experience
3. Action — what is being done
4. ETA — when to expect resolution or next update
5. Workaround — if available

Additional Resources

Reference Files

• references/incident-templates.md — Full notification templates for each incident phase (initial, update, resolution), by priority level, for each audience type
• references/statuspage-templates.md — Status page update templates following the Investigating/Identified/Monitoring/Resolved lifecycle, compatible with Atlassian Statuspage and Instatus