Crisis Engineering: Time-Tested Tools for Turning Chaos into Clarity

Learn how to successfully emerge from complex crisis conditions with this practical, comprehensive guide.
 
"A book I wish I’d had in difficult times.” —General Stanley McChrystal, US Army (Ret) & Co-Founder and CEO, McChrystal Group
 
When the system breaks, what do you do? You're in the middle of a meltdown. The platform is down, the phones are ringing, the headlines are brutal, and your team is looking to you for answers. The usual playbooks—careful planning, expert consultation, bold strategy—aren’t working. What if we told you that instead of the end of the world, this is your moment to create lasting, transformative change?     
 
Crisis Engineering is your field guide to leading through the chaos—and coming out stronger than before. Drawing on decades of experience inside some of the most complex systems in industry and government, Marina Nitze, Matthew Weaver, and Mikey Dickerson, of the crisis engineering firm Layer Aleph, reveal their powerful, hands-on framework for navigating high-stakes crises.
From the rescue of HealthCare.gov to wildfire response and pandemic logistics, this book offers real-world stories, practical tools, and hard-won insights into how complex systems fail—and how to help them recover. You’ll learn:

• How to identify the 5 signals of a crisis—and use them to your advantage
• Why traditional leadership instincts fail under pressure—and what to do instead
• How to stand up your own crisis engineering effort when it matters most

Whether you’re in tech, government, healthcare, or any other critical system, Crisis Engineering gives you the mindset, tools, and vocabulary to lead with clarity and create lasting change.
 

Marina Nitze served as Chief Technology Officer of the US Dept. of Veterans Affairs and Senior Advisor on technology at the White House. She previously co-authored Hack Your Bureaucracy.    
 
Matthew Weaver was a founding member of the "SRE" discipline which now dominates technical operations worldwide, while responsible for the availability of Google's search product in 2005-2009. He later held the title "Rogue Leader" while establishing the Defense Digital Service at the US Dept. of Defense. He is a partner in the crisis engineering firm Layer Aleph.

Mikey Dickerson, also a founding SRE at Google, led the HealthCare.gov rescue, for which he was featured on the cover of TIME magazine. Afterwards, President Obama appointed him Deputy Chief Information Officer of the United States, where he created the United States Digital Service.

Marina, Weaver, and Mikey are partners in the crisis engineering firm Layer Aleph.