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The Power of Intentional Alerting

· 3 min read
Simon Painter
Simon Painter
Cloud Network Architect

Lessons from Personal Tech and Enterprise IT​

Notifications and alerts are everywhere in our always-on, connected world. But as I've learned from personal experience and my work in enterprise IT, more alerts don't always mean better outcomes. In fact, too many alerts can be completely counterproductive.

My journey with intentional alerting began with my Apple Watch. At first, I was excited to have every app sending me real-time updates. But I quickly felt overwhelmed by the constant buzzing on my wrist. I was being pulled out of the moment, distracted from what I was doing, all to check alerts that were rarely urgent or needed action.

So I made a change. I turned off notifications for everything except essential real-time communications that need immediate responses, like calls, texts, and critical messaging apps. The result? I'm more focused, less stressed, and I've taken back control of my attention.

This principle of intentional alerting is just as powerful in IT, especially networking. Too often, companies take a "more is better" approach to alerts, either leaving every possible notification on or hesitating to turn any off for fear of missing something important. The result is a flood of alerts that quickly overwhelms teams and leads to alert fatigue and lack of ownership.

The solution is to be ruthlessly intentional about which alerts are enabled and how they're managed. Every alert should have a clear owner and a defined action plan. If you can't explain who's responsible for an alert and what they should do about it, that's a warning sign that the alert might not be necessary.

One effective tool for this is what I call an "alert dictionary" — a central resource that maps out key information for each alert, such as:

  • Who owns the alert
  • What specific actions should be taken in response
  • When it should trigger (and when it shouldn't)
  • How urgent the response needs to be
  • What systems or services it affects

Creating an intentional alerting strategy​

If you're drowning in alerts, here's how to start being more intentional:

  1. Audit your current alerts: List all existing notifications across your systems. Note which ones actually prompt action and which are just "nice to know."

  2. Identify the critical few: Which alerts are truly essential for keeping your business running? These usually relate to customer impact, security incidents, or major system failures.

  3. Establish clear ownership: Every alert should have someone responsible for it. No more alerts going to "the team" - assign them to specific roles.

  4. Create response plans: For each alert you keep, document what actions should be taken, by whom, and within what timeframe.

  5. Start culling: Be ruthless about turning off non-essential alerts. You can always turn them back on if they prove necessary.

The payoff of being intentional​

Taking control of your alerting strategy yields massive benefits. Your teams will experience less alert fatigue, respond more quickly to the alerts that matter, and waste less time on trivial notifications. Issues get resolved faster because the signal-to-noise ratio improves dramatically.

Just like my Apple Watch experience, being intentional about alerts in enterprise IT leads to more focus, less stress, and better control over what deserves your attention. The most effective IT operations aren't the ones with the most sophisticated alerting systems - they're the ones that have carefully designed their notifications to drive the right actions at the right time.