Effective EOPs: how cognitive science can help

Human error is a contributing factor in a significant majority of data center outages, and failure to follow correct procedures is the most prevalent subset of human error, according to the Uptime Intelligence report Annual outage analysis 2024. While emergency operating procedures (EOPs) are intended to help data center operators address the events that can lead to downtime, many do not keep their EOPs readily accessible and up to date.

But there is a further problem that is common within the industry. EOPs can sometimes be difficult to follow, too vague or too detailed, poorly presented, or inappropriate for an emergency. This is where science can help: cognitive psychology principles can be applied to increase the likelihood that instructions will be seen and easily followed.