Cognitive Tempo refers to the pattern and rhythm of how someone processes information and makes decisions. Normally, this refers to fast and impulsive vs slow and methodical. Combined with Anticipatory Processing, Cognitive Tempo can be both fast and methodical.

The goal of incident response is to minimize the total impact on customers over time through mitigation and root cause resolution. For example, a high-impact, short-duration incident (five-minute total outage) can be as impactful to a customer as a low-impact, long-duration incident (slowness for a full day).

A key component of SaaS incident response is to mitigate the incident, if possible, to lessen the immediate impact on the customer and buy the team time to resolve the issue permanently.