OODA Loop

Core rule: For reversible moves under time pressure, act on ~70% confidence, then immediately re-observe. Cycle faster than the situation compounds; a late perfect plan loses to a fast loop.

When to Use

• Incident response, outage, or ongoing degradation where state is still moving.
• Debugging a moving target (intermittent failure, live traffic shift).
• Any time-bounded decision where waiting for full certainty costs more than a reversible action.

When NOT to Use

• The situation is static and you have time — deliberate analysis or a hypothesis differential wins.
• The next action is irreversible or high blast-radius — raise the evidence bar; 70% is not enough.
• You can cheaply localize the cause (read the failing diff, log, or metric) — test that hypothesis directly instead of looping in the dark.
• There is no time pressure and no changing environment — OODA adds churn without value.

Procedure