Absolutely. I'll be the first to say that compliance doesn't mean you're actually good at those things (and I actually have said as much here on HN). However,

Absolutely. I'll be the first to say that compliance doesn't mean you're actually good at those things (and I actually have said as much here on HN). However, the point remains that things like change management aren't some nebulous, pie-in-the-sky concept. That they are in compliance frameworks speaks to the fact that they are very fundamental and basic (compliance frameworks are typically the bare minimum of things you should be doing). A half-assed CM process won't catch all errors by any means. But it will catch the most basic ones. And according to CF's post-mortem, the initial issue that kicked off the chain of events was "backbone congestion", which has got to be one of the most basic things that would be included in an IR playbook (Prince even referred to it as "routine maintenance" in an earlier message). And then the config change that was put in place also seems like a fairly basic change that probably would have been caught with with some basic testing. That's what catches my eye the most. This incident wasn't some wild, niche, couldn't-have-been-predicted event. It was "backbone congestion", followed by an attempted change of routes on the backbone to alleviate the congestion. For an internet services company to not have a standard, pre-approved and pre-tested solution for resolving something as predictable as backbone congestion is shocking to me.