A critical bug is found in production. What steps would you take?

Immediate Actions

1. Assess Impact:

• How many users are affected?
• What functionality is broken?
• Is there data loss or security risk?
• What is the business impact?

2. Notify Stakeholders:

• Alert product owner/manager
• Inform development team
• Notify customer support team
• Update status page if applicable

3. Document the Bug:

• Create detailed bug report
• Include steps to reproduce
• Attach screenshots/logs
• Note affected environment/version

4. Reproduce the Issue:

• Verify in production (if safe)
• Reproduce in staging/test environment
• Identify root cause

5. Determine Fix Strategy:

• Hotfix deployment
• Rollback to previous version
• Feature flag to disable broken feature
• Temporary workaround

6. Test the Fix:

• Verify fix in test environment
• Run regression tests
• Perform smoke testing
• Get approval for deployment

7. Deploy and Monitor:

• Deploy fix to production
• Monitor application logs
• Verify fix is working
• Monitor user reports

8. Post-Mortem:

• Conduct root cause analysis
• Document lessons learned
• Update test cases to prevent recurrence
• Improve testing process if needed

Communication Template

Subject: CRITICAL: Production Issue - [Feature Name]

Impact: [High/Medium/Low]
Affected Users: [Number/Percentage]
Status: [Investigating/Fix in Progress/Resolved]

Description:
[Brief description of the issue]

Steps Being Taken:
1. [Action 1]
2. [Action 2]

ETA for Fix: [Time estimate]

Updates will be provided every [X] hours.

Key Principles

• Stay calm and focused
• Communicate clearly and frequently
• Prioritize user impact
• Document everything
• Learn from the incident