Incident management and automation have become vital components for ensuring the reliability and stability of modern software systems. As businesses increasingly depend on technology for their day-to-day operations, any downtime or disruption can have significant consequences.

A recent report found that companies with a fully deployed AI and automation program could identify a breach 74 days faster than those without one. Additionally, those who tested their incident response plan saved $2.44 million compared to those who didn’t.

Automating incident response and operational workflows is crucial for Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and DevOps teams. Automation allows teams to handle incidents efficiently, reduce human error, and ensure that systems recover faster from failures.

Effective incident management goes beyond simply resolving problems; it involves diagnosing issues quickly, ensuring that all relevant data is captured, and automating routine tasks to free up engineers for more complex decision-making.

Automation platforms explicitly designed for incident management can significantly reduce engineers' stress and workload, particularly during high-pressure situations. Tools that combine ease of use with robust automation features make it easier for teams to monitor, respond to, and resolve incidents in real-time.

This blog will explore two prominent tools: Doctor Droid PlayBook and Rundeck. While both platforms offer automation capabilities, Doctor Droid PlayBook excels in automating incident response with features tailored to on-call workflows. In contrast, Rundeck is better suited for scheduled tasks and general DevOps automation.

Let’s explore why Doctor Droid PlayBook is the better choice for SRE teams looking to streamline their incident management processes.

Rundeck has earned its place in the DevOps and SRE space by providing teams with an effective platform for simplifying their daily tasks. From managing tickets to executing scripts and deployments, Rundeck helps teams automate routine tasks and streamline operations.

However, when it comes to incident investigation and making real-time decisions on how to handle complex situations, Doctor Droid PlayBooks clearly outshines Rundeck.

Let us explore the five key reasons why Doctor Droid PlayBooks is a more robust solution for handling incident management, particularly regarding investigation paths and automation workflows that allow teams to respond quickly and effectively.

1. Investigation Paths & Leveraging Conditions

When an incident alert is received, Doctor Droid PlayBooks allows users to create guided investigation paths that include queries to metrics, logs, or databases and apply conditions based on the output. These investigation paths offer flexibility and intelligence that can be executed automatically or manually, depending on the user’s needs.

The playbook executor engine makes decisions based on pre-configured conditions, ensuring that the right action is taken at each step of the investigation process. This automation not only saves time but also ensures that the investigation follows a logical and data-driven flow.

In contrast, Rundeck provides a simpler, plain execution view where users can run pre-configured actions from an organized repository. While useful for routine tasks, Rundeck lacks the capability to guide investigations based on real-time conditions or data-driven outputs.

Users must manually choose which path to follow, which can slow down response times and increase the risk of human error. Rundeck’s limited ability to configure conditional workflows leaves teams without the intelligence and adaptability needed to make informed decisions during incident response.

With Doctor Droid PlayBooks, you have a tool designed to adapt to the complexity of incidents, guiding teams through investigation paths while leveraging conditions to ensure that the next step is always right.

2. Integrations with Telemetry

Doctor Droid PlayBooks provides deep integrations with telemetry sources such as Prometheus and Elasticsearch, enabling teams to set up dynamic conditions based on real-time metrics and logs.

This allows PlayBooks to automatically query relevant data following an alert, helping teams quickly identify root causes and make informed decisions about the next steps. Whether it’s continuing an investigation or taking immediate action, PlayBooks uses telemetry data to guide responses intelligently.

On the other hand, Rundeck focuses more on executing predefined actions rather than supporting investigations. With Rundeck, users must already know which job to execute in response to an alert, as it lacks the ability to query telemetry data to uncover root causes. There’s no built-in mechanism for an automatic post-alert flow that can integrate telemetry sources for deeper insights into the system’s health.

Doctor Droid’s telemetry integrations result in faster, more accurate incident resolution compared to the action-focused approach of Rundeck.

3. Designed for On-Call Runbooks vs. Designed for Generic DevOps Runbooks

Doctor Droid PlayBooks is built specifically for on-call investigations and incident response workflows. From its intuitive UI to the execution views and timeline management, every feature in Doctor Droid PlayBooks is designed with the demands of on-call engineers in mind.

The platform is optimized to handle the high-pressure, real-time decision-making required during incidents. It ensures that teams can access relevant data quickly and efficiently and make the right decisions in the heat of the moment.

The playbooks are structured to streamline incident troubleshooting and root cause analysis, which are critical during on-call shifts.

In contrast, Rundeck is a more generic automation platform designed to cover a broad range of DevOps and sysadmin tasks. It focuses on automating tasks like IAM policy creation, resource management, and general system administration duties.

While these features are valuable for day-to-day operations, they lack the specialized functionality that on-call engineers require during urgent incidents. Rundeck’s design does not prioritize the unique needs of on-call runbooks, making it less suited for incident response and critical troubleshooting.

Doctor Droid PlayBooks offers a solution that is finely tuned to meet the specific needs of on-call engineers, allowing them to handle incidents faster and more effectively.

4. Completing the Loop

Doctor Droid PlayBooks offers seamless integration with popular alerting tools like Slack, PagerDuty, Zenduty, and others, allowing playbooks to be automatically triggered from alerts or tickets.

When an alert is triggered, PlayBooks ensures that context from the alert is passed directly into the playbook steps, enabling engineers to have all the relevant information available right from the start of the investigation.

This context propagation streamlines incident response, eliminating the need for manual input or additional setup to transfer data between systems.

In contrast, Rundeck lacks native integrations with these alerting tools for automated job triggers. Users would need to manually build webhook handlers or rely on custom-built webhooks to trigger jobs in response to alerts, which can be cumbersome and time-consuming.

Additionally, passing the required context into the job execution process is not as straightforward, often requiring more manual setup.

Doctor Droid PlayBooks provides a fully integrated solution that completes the loop. It makes it easy to trigger workflows based on real-time alerts. This level of integration and automation is crucial for reducing response times and enhancing efficiency during critical incidents.

5. Automatic Recommendations

One of Doctor Droid PlayBooks' standout features is its ability to leverage past incident response knowledge to provide automatic recommendations for handling new incidents.

By preserving RCAs (Root Cause Analyses), reports, and documented runbooks, Doctor Droid can analyze the context of an incoming alert and recommend the most relevant actions based on past incidents.

This feature significantly speeds up decision-making for on-call teams, allowing them to quickly identify the next steps and more efficiently reach the root cause and resolution. It helps teams make informed decisions without manually sifting through historical data, ensuring faster responses during high-pressure situations.

In contrast, Rundeck focuses on completing individual tasks and workflows but does not offer an automatic recommendation system. Users must know which jobs or tasks must be executed when an alert occurs. No feature in Rundeck analyzes past incidents to guide users through the troubleshooting process or suggest next actions based on historical data.

Doctor Droid PlayBooks' automatic recommendation feature is a game-changer for on-call teams. It helps them resolve incidents faster by offering context-driven suggestions and reducing the cognitive load during investigations. This feature gives Doctor Droid a clear advantage over Rundeck when it comes to intelligent incident response.