Rollback and Recovery

Why this matters

During incidents, the biggest delay is often reconstructing what changed and choosing a safe recovery path. Improvised fixes increase risk. Full restores are slow and expensive. Governance makes recovery a procedure, not a scramble.

Common failure modes

• Teams cannot quickly identify what changed during the incident window

• Recovery requires manual edits, which increases uncertainty

• Broad rollbacks undo unrelated changes and create secondary failures

• Post incident reporting is incomplete because records are scattered

What good looks like

Teams can identify changes quickly, execute recovery through controlled workflows, and retain a clear record of what was reverted and why.

Targeted recovery and targeted rollback

Fast recovery is not only about speed. It is about minimizing blast radius.

Targeted rollback focuses on reverting the specific change that caused instability, in the specific environment where it occurred, without undoing unrelated changes. This reduces secondary breakage and makes recovery safer under pressure.

Database Change Governance metrics this pillar improves

• Mean Time to Recover (MTTR): improves because diagnosis and recovery steps are faster and more repeatable.

Implementation approach

1. Ensure every deployment produces a clear change record and execution outcome

1. Define recovery playbooks: rollback, forward fix, and containment

1. Standardize recovery steps so teams are not inventing process during incidents

1. Practice recovery on non production environments to build confidence

1. Capture recovery actions and outcomes as evidence